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Childhood and Migration: From Experience toAgencyKnörr, Jacqueline (Ed.)

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Jacqueline Knörr (ed.) Childhood and Migration

JACQUELINE KNÖRR ( ED.)

CHILDHOOD AND MIGRATION

From Experience to Agency

[transcript]

This book was printed with the financial support ofthe Max Planck Institute for Social

Anthropology HallejSaale.

Gedruckt mit Unterstützung des Max-Planck-Instituts für ethnologische Forschung in

HallejSaale.

Bibliographie information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internetat http:j jdnb.ddb.de

© 2005 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

l.e<D@~ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons A'IMI[Mii· Attribution-NonCommerciai-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Cover Iayout by: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Typeset by: Jutta Turner, HallejSaale Printed by: Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar

ISBN 3-89942-384-4

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements 7

Introduction 9

JACQUELINE KNÖRR AND ANGELA NUNES

Coming of Age as "The Third Generation."

Children of Immigrants in Berlin 23

SABINE MANNITZ

When German Children Come "Horne." Experiences of (Re-)migration to Germany- and some Remarks about the "TCK"-Issue 51

JACQUELINE KNÖRR

Leaving the Shtetl Behind.

Children' s Literature on Jewish Migration from Eastem Europe 77

JANAPOHL

Displacement and Identity.

The Memoirs of a Juvenile Deportee under Soviet Occupation 95

VIOLET A DA VOLIUTE

Children Making Media. Constmctions of Horne and Belanging 113

NADINA CHRISTOPOULOU AND SONJA DE LEEUW

Children Writing Migration.

Views from a Southem ltalian Mountain Village 137

JANC. ÜBERG

5

Small Heroes. Rap Music and Se1ective Be1ongings of Y oung Haitian

Immigrants in Montrea1

HEIKE DROTBOHM

Limina1ity as Linguistic Process. Immigrant Y outh and Experiences

155

of Langnage in Germany and the United States 17 5

H. JULIA EKSNER AND MARJORIE FAULSTICH ÜRELLANA

Chi1dhood Dynamics in a Changing Cu1ture.

Examp1es from the Xavante Peop1e of Central Brazi1

ANGELA NUNES

Contributors

6

207

227

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank all contributors of this book for their great cooperation in getting this volume together. I am grateful to many who have read the contributions and made comments highly appreciated. My special thanks go to Nina Glick­Schiller and Otto Habeck for carefully reviewing some of the articles. I am thankful to Jutta Turner for copy-editing this book thoroughly and energeti­cally, never mnning out of patience and maintaining a sense of humour at all times. Andreas Hemming proofread large parts of this book and I thank him for that.

I dedicate this book to my nieces Lina Antonia and Annika Marie.

Jacqueline Knörr

7

INTRODUCTION

Jacqueline Knörr and Angela Nun es

Children's own views about their own childhood have long been neglected in the social and cultural sciences and so have their views of their experience of migration. This is true even when children are the ones under study and de­spite the fact that children make up a large proportion of migrants all over the world. The reasons for such neglect of child migrants' views are largely the same as those for the neglect of children' s views in general. W e will examine some of the major reasons here, but to do so we must first look at the history of childhood research in general, at the overall neglect of children's views and voices, and at the neglect of children's experiences and roles as social agents in the world they live in.

Let us start by pointing out that children were not simply ignored as ob­jects of social and cultural studies. The first anthropological attempts to call researchers' attention to the influence culture has on children growing up of were made in the late 1920s by Mead who pointed out that children create cul­tural identity in a socializing process which is immersed in culture and ernerg­ing from it at the same time. 1 Based on ethnographies of non-westem socie­ties, she questioned the biological explanations for human maturation and de­velopment as stated by psychology, according to which children were not to be considered complete social beings. The Contestation between cultural and biological explanations of human behaviour in general was a cmcial issue in most theory ( de-)construction pursued in the late 1970s and 1980s.

A more pluralistic notion of childhood and a more diachronic perspective including the idea that childhood might not always have existed as it is under­stood today was introduced in the early 1960s? Thereby, not only biological determinism was contested but also childhood henceforth not understood as one single phenomenon but rather as a variety of phenomena influenced by and interrelated with social and cultural conditions. lt is therefore of cmcial importance to take into consideration the different historical, social and cul­tural contexts within which childhood is situated. This is especially important when dealing with childhood in societies different from those from which our dominant knowledge concerning childhood has emerged, and when investigat­ing childhood in a comparative perspective.

1 Mead 1928, 1931. 2 Aries 1962.

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JACQUELINE KNÖRR AND ANGELA NUNES

Hardman (1973) tried to identify the obstacles that had prevented scien­tific progress in the anthropological contributions to childhood research, stat­ing that none of the existing anthropological theories had revealed what this particular field of study could be. The social lives of children are a world which escapes adult understanding, she claims, this being the reason why until recently children were not considered complete social beings and not valued as phenomena worthy of the attention of social scientists. Hardman also pointed out the necessity to go beyond the common view that children are merely receivers or containers of what they are taught by adults and to view children as autonomaus and creative beings producing social reality and cul­ture. Only if we acknowledge such, she claims, can substantial knowledge about children's understanding of reality and the means by which they organ­ize and transform it, be achieved.

Although isolated, the efforts made by Mead, Aries, and Hardman signifi­cantly contributed to a critical review of the dominant theoretical concepts about childhood at the time and thus prepared the ground for developing new and more adequate paradigms.

At the beginning of the 1980s, however, proposals ernerging from Socio­logy, History, Anthropology, and Psychology were still diffuse and ambigu­ous - and far too unconnected to form the consensus needed to develop ade­quate theoretical approaches and methodological devices for the study of childhood.

According to Jenks (1982, 1996), the socialization models which have been in use since the 1920s have been exclusively focused on the adult social world, on the adults children were going to be. Devised without taking into consideration the social world of children, these models were not able to con­tribute to an understanding of childhood. Real change could only occur as a result of constituting childhood as an ontological category, which is valid in its own right rather than as a residual or transitory phase on the way to adult­hood. The constant use of "growing up metaphors" through which adults, in­cluding the social scientists, tried to explain their relation with the "other" that constitutes the child must therefore be overcome. For Jenks, it is the relation­ship between adults and children that must change in order to achieve a tme understanding of children and childhood. lt must be emancipated from a view which puts adults at the centre of the social world while placing children at its margins which they gradually depart from for a more central position when passing into adulthood.

Childhood as a Social Phenomenon (CSAAP), a comparative research programme which was coordinated by the sociologist Jens Qvortmp and car­ried out in 19 (mostly European) countfies from 1987 to 1992, marked a re­markable change in academic thought concerning the study of childhood. The project had, however, a difficult start: ideas were new, informationwas scant and disperse, no major precursors existed, and even among the researchers themselves it was still debated whether the academic notion of a "sociology of childhood" had a counterpart in social reality. However, the approach taken-

10

lNTRODUCTION

looking at childhood as a social phenomena in its own right - as well as the international format ofthe programme and its findings resulted in the recogni­tion of the study of childhood as an acknowledged area of social and educa­tional research.3 Childhood was declared to be a specific form of the social stmcture of all (researched) societies and - in sociological terms - a perma­nent social category rather than a transient phase each individual has to pass through. lt also became clear that children themselves have their share in the constmction of childhood and society and that children are exposed to the same societal forces as adults, although in different ways - one of the major difference being their higher dependency on the conditions created - for both adults and children- by the adult world. Thus, according to the findings, chil­dren should also be regarded as a social minority suffering from marginaliza­tion and Suppression.

James & Prout (1990) pointout that children "must be seen as involved in the constmction of their own social lives, the lives of those around them and of the societies in which they live. They can no Iongerbe regarded simply as the passive subjects of stmctural determinations" ( 4 ). Meant as a reflexive tool rather than a set of fixed theoretical postulates they introduced a system of constituent elements for sociological and anthropological childhood research.4

James, Jenks & Prout later specified four main approaches that meanwhile had become established in current childhood studies:5

• Childhood as a social construction: This approach discards con­cepts that until then had been considered self-evident, such as the concept of childhood as biologically determined. lt inserts an epis­temology of childhood in social studies. The idea of a universal childhood is substituted by the idea of a plurality of childhoods. In this understanding childhood also plays a political role in society.

• Childhood as a world aside: This approach emphasizes childhood as socially stmctured in a different way from adulthood. Therefore, it needs to be revealed, understood and analyzed by means of eth­nographic research that involves children as subjects speaking for themselves.

• Children as a minority group: This approach has been developed in the context of an understanding of the world as unequal and dis­criminative, of adult power determining and deciding on childhood issues. lt considers children as one of the categories of muted "oth­ers." lt intends to give children a voice and aims at research which is in the interest of children rather than being just about them.

3 Qvortrup et al. 1994. 4 James & Prout 1990: 8-9. 5 Cf. James; Jenks & Prout 1997: 198-205.

11

JACQUELINE KNÖRR AND ANGELA NUNES

• Childhood as a component of (all) social structures: This approach looks at childhood as a (universal) constituent of (all) social struc­tures, which, nevertheless, takes different forms and meanings de­pending on the given society it is part of.

These four approaches also show how childhood studies can be linked to cur­rent discourses taking place in the sociological and anthropological constmc­tion of social theory, specifically by employing the notions of "agency versus stmcture," "identity versus difference," "continuity versus change" and "local versus global." Thus, theory developed in childhood studies has a lot to con­tribute to general debates in current social sciences.

The debate concerning the social and the biological impact on childhood is still continuing, however. According to Toren (1993), former concepts of child socialization should not be put aside or ignored but re-evaluated and ad­justed to identify both their potentials and limitations. She argues that one of the major problems of such concepts lies in their a-historical character which ignores the fact that human cognition processes - including those of children­are in fact historical, related to the society they are part of and, thus, changing and transforrning with time and with social and cultural context. Toren does not want to increase the number of ethnographies dealing with childhood as such, but stresses that children should be an integral part of studies dealing with any given society, claiming that anthropological studies which ignore children's knowledge about the society they live in are incomplete. She attrib­utes the lack of interest in childhood to the fact that socialization is usually considered a predictable process through which children simply reproduce the adult' s world.

Despite the shift towards the social world of children in more recent ap­proaches, scientific knowledge about childhood stilllargely ignores what chil­dren themselves have to say about their lives and their own place in the social world. Children' s explicit ways of criticizing the latter could be one of the reasons why adults are reluctant to consider their views, observations and as­sumptions relevant.6

The emergence of childhood as a social category of scientific interest and research has been compared with the emergence of women' s studies as a field of research, which in the 1970s gave rise to a shift in paradigms in gender studies and theories. 7 However, the big difference is, that, unlike women, children cannot pursue ethnographic research on themselves. So it is up to adults to discover how children see the world, their social lives, their child­hood. They can do so by letting children speak for themselves instead of clinging to the traditional belief in adult superiority implying that adults can think and speak for children better than they can for themselves. With regard to the practical application of such a shift in attitude adults could involve chil-

6 Cf. Butler & Shaw 1996. 7 See Caputo 1995.

12

lNTRODUCTION

dren in developing childhood social action progrannnes since only then they could be developed in ways which suit children rather than merely the inter­ests of children as perceived by adults. 8

What is also still largely missing is a general agreement that studies of childhood help provide more complete knowledge of particular societies and social phenomena and thereby add new perspectives to the social and cultural sciences as a whole. Speaking about anthropology in particular, Hirschfeld states:

It's worth repeating how curious is anthropology's aversion to children. [ ... ] chil­dren are theoretically crucial: anthropology is premised on a process that children do better than ahnost all others, namely, acquire cultural knowledge. Nonetheless, the call to bring an anthropology of children into the main stream has been repeatedly made [ ... ] , still, a sustained, coherent, and - most critically - theoretically influential program of child-focused research has not emerged (Hirschfeld 2002: 624).

Hirschfeld points out that the actual problern is not the lack of research on childhood. What he finds surprising though is that the volume of research car­ried out during the last decade has not had much effect on general anthropo­logical theory. In other words, anthropologists dealing with childhood might have done good work, but other anthropologists not interested in childhood have failed to consider the impact their findings might have on anthropologi­cal thought in general. The participation of children in social and cultural re­production, as well as the impact of children's culture on adults' culture is still very much underestimated. He also emphasizes that children do not just learn and reproduce culture but also create and produce it. In fact, he claims "an­thropology is premised on a process that children do better than almost all others, namely, acquire cultural knowledge" (624). If such acknowledgement of children' s cultural competences is difficult for adults in general, it is not surprising that this is the case for anthropologists as well. Hirschfeld suggests that one possible way to overcome this resistance is to consider that children constitute themselves as a semi-autonomous subculture like so many other subcultures that constitute sociallife, and therefore have equal importance and deserve equal attention from social scientists.

Pierre Emy (2003) also stresses the creativity of children in the process of social (re-)production, emphasizing that it is especially pronounced in socie­ties undergoing rapid change, where children often turn out to be the ones educating their parents more than their parents are educating them. He claims that in some such cases it would actually be accurate to speak of "children cul­tures" and "children societies" (15). Thus, children must be seen as both ob-

8 See Martins 1993; Rizinni 2002.

13

JACQUELINE KNÖRR AND ANGELA NUNES

jects of cultural adaptation and as active subjects, who change the culture they were bom into while adapting to it (at the same time). 9

Recent research on childhood among Brazilian indigenous peoples takes the path suggested by Toren, Hirschfeld and other authors here mentioned, thus aiming at a notion of socialization which is part of an historical and dy­namic process of culture. 1° Children are considered as complete beings, as so­cial agents able to create a socio-cultural universe with its own particularities and as social agents able to critically reflect upon the adults' world.

That childhood is socially constmcted is now generally accepted, but its variation in different cultural contexts still needs investigation which takes into consideration children' s voices and children' s actions. Studying age sets and classes socially well defined, as well as life cycles and social learning processes may very well be useful devices when trying to understand the cate­gory "child" and its social place and meaning in specific cultural contexts. However, one should keep in mind that children have something original to say and therefore their experiences, representations, feelings, and expressions should be considered a valid object of social research. According to James & James (2004) children's experiences of social life and their impact on their own childhood, future childhood generations and on adult' s life is still rather unclear. In other words, childhood agency is not yet fully recognized. Chil­dren may have been discovered as actors playing roles which help them enter adulthood, but not as agents who shape those roles and imbue them with spe­cific meanings. Children also create new roles for themselves, both as indi­viduals and as members of wider social groups. They do so in ways which in­duces change in the sociallife of the group as a whole andin the successive generation of children (like their parents did before them). Recognizing chil­dren's agency means recognizing their experience as a potential for change. Children' s agency makes a real difference for society at large.

Now what does all this imply for studying and understanding children's ex­periences and their agency with regard to processes of migration?

While it has been acknowledged to some extent that children's own con­cepts of their social world, and their thoughts and feelings should be consid­ered when studying childhood in general and specific aspects of childhood in particular, this has had little effect on migration studies dealing with children. Little is known about children's particular understanding of (migrant) life, their concepts of their place of origin and their host society, their ways of building identity for themselves. This is tme despite the fact that children

9 See Egli (2003) who describes such a process with regard to hereditary rules in Eastem Nepal, which to a considerable extent predestine children's perspectives but which are also changed substantially by children in the process of adaptation and "enculturation."

10 See Lopes da Silva & Nurres 2002.

14

lNTRODUCTION

make up a large proportion of migrants and despite the fact that children take on important roles in mediating between their world of origin and the host so­ciety.

Children play this role for many reasons, one being that they acquire new cultural knowledge so "exceptionally well." 11 Children arealso usually more involved in the social life of their host societies than their parents through school and other child-specific institutions and contact zones (playing grounds, football fields, kindergarten, backyards etc. ). Children' s ways of so­cializing with other children and with the world around is also less constrained by prejudice and bias than those of adults. Children want to be among other children; the "others'" cultural, social or political background is far less im­portant to them than they often are for their- or the "others'"- parents.

We want to contribute to the understanding of how children themselves experience, view and manage migration and we want to show by means of which they construct an identity for themselves which takes into account their experiences from both their places of origin and their host societies.

The question that arises first when dealing with children constmcting iden­tity in the context of migration is whether they perceive and define cultural identity for themselves at all. In the context of sociological and anthropologi­cal research on migration and multiculturality concepts have been developed which try to terminologically classify and differentiate varieties of "mixed" culture and cultural identity (hybrid, creole, transnational, global, glocal etc. ). Do such concepts also fit the reality of migrating children or is their percep­tion of culture more dynamic and flexible than that of the researchers on the one hand and of the adults they usually research on the other?

One of the key issues raised in the context of identity as created by mi­graut children is the view children have ofboth their respective culture of ori­gin and their host society. How children constmct an identity for themselves, a sense of home and belanging and a sense of origin and descent which takes into account both contexts in which they find themselves is critically impor­tant. Another question is to what extent and by which means a relationship is maintained to the place of origin and whether and how it changes in the course of migration. How is this relationship represented in social interaction among children, between children and their parents, and between children and their social environment? lt is important to get insight into children' s observation concerning the social and cultural changes taking place that affect themselves and their farnilies in the process of migration. What changes do they perceive, what do they think of those changes and how do they deal with them? What do they relate their observations to? Who do they perceive as initiating these changes and do they perceive themselves as agents of change within their farnilies and their new social environment?

Another important issue is the process of social and cultural integration in society as a whole. How is it influenced by the dynamics of interaction of a

11 Hirschfeld 2002: 615, 624.

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JACQUELINE KNÖRR AND ANGELA NUNES

particular cultural background of the society of origin on the one hand and the integration strategies and practices of a particular host society on the other?

The role of social milieus and peer groups is an important issue when deal­ing with children experiencing and managing migration. How do peer group environments, socialization at home and school interact or contradict each other? And how do children deal with these different social milieus and the demands they put on them?

One experience almost all migrants of all ages have is xenophobia. How do migrant children cope with a lack of acceptance, with hostility and exclu­sion? How do children make use of existing institutions to overcome fmstra­tions resulting from such experiences and how do they create new social niches where they can feel at home? How do they express processes of cul­tural orientation, integration, disintegration via music, writing, media, and forms of creative discourse? Are there gender specific differences concerning the construction of identity in the course of migration? How do different mo­tivations and reasons for migration influence the course that migration and in­tegration take?

We cannot deal with all these issues with the same degree ofthoroughness in this volume, nor can we answer all the questions raised here. What we can do, however, is shed light on some of the major issues related to children's experience of migration. There can be no doubt that cultural identity and so­cial practices learned and generated in childhood have an important impact on the course of social and cultural integration in youth and adulthood. There­fore, the investigation of these processes is not only of scientific interest but can also give important impetus to the development of strategies and modes of integration that appeal to children and serve their needs.

The approach we take is both comparative and interdisciplinary, the con­tributors having different theoretical and methodological backgrounds, and dealing with different social and cultural settings with regard to both place of origin and host society.

Sabine Mannitz' contribution presents the results of ten months of ethno­graphic fieldwork and subsequent interviews over a period of four years with adolescents from immigrant families in former West-Berlin. She points out that migration research has often stressed the adverse circumstances of immi­grants in Germany. The so-called second and third generations in particular are seen as having the problern of living betwixt and between two cultures. This perception situates immigrants and their children in a stmctural conflict and creates the impression that they must choose between two competing cul­tures. But contrary to this model, Mannitz finds that her informants in Berlin face no such gap. While conforming in many instances to the idea ofbounded groups and their unequivocal social identities - the idea that foreigners differ from Germans in their culture - children generally manage to act in both of these settings, applying practices of mediation and eventually creating a new transnational space for the management of identifications. However, despite

16

lNTRODUCTION

their competency in double agency, they have to cope with the fact that nei­ther their migrant parents nor the wider German society is willing to legiti­mize their melange of identifications as a viable strategy. This is significant beyond the individuallevel, since creating an intersecting space for imagining collectivity may be a first step towards developing new codes of coexistence for the society as a whole. According to Mannitz, with transnationalization challenging the nation-state's previous raison d'i?tre, the ways in which mi­grants constmct their multiple affiliations might thus become centrally in­stmctive.

Jacqueline Knörr deals with a group of (re-)migrant children and youths hardly mentioned in migration studies, namely children of Western back­gmund brought up in a non-Western environment before "returning" to a "home," which in many cases has never been or is no Ionger home to them. She deals with German children coming to live in Germany after having spent most of their childhood in Sub-Saharan Africa. Many of these children spent most of their social lives in German andlor international expatriate environ­ments. In the context of dealing with some of their typical features she criti­cally exarnines the notion of "TCK" - "Third Culture Kid" - a notion which has been used for some time now to denote children brought up as (children of) expatriates. Knörr looks at what it means to be brought up as a white child in Africa and how this experience affects (re-)migration to Germany. Upon "return" these children often find themselves in a dilemma: they are expected tobe the same- speaking the same langnage and looking the same as every­one else - while their experiences, views, and ways of life are usually quite different from those of children and youths who have spent all their lives "at home" in Germany. Their difference is often neither recognized nor appreci­ated by teachers, peers, or their own families. What makes it even harder for them to find some comfort in their situation is the fact that compared to other groups of "real" migrants, it is usually more difficult for them to find others around them who share their experiences and problems. Knörr looks at the views and attitudes these children and youths develop in the course of (re-)in­tegration and at some of their ways "in to" and "out of' German society -which include social isolation, self-exotization, multiple identifications, and idealization of one's former "real" home back in Africa.

Jana Pohl analyses the image of the shtetl in American children's litera­ture. The shtetl was a predominantly Jewish community which corresponded to the size of a village or small town. The shtetl image has a long and rich tra­dition in American children's literature. lt accommodates the manifold recol­lections of Jewish-American writers, whose autobiographical experiences are often related to their subject. To many Eastern European Jews who left their home and migrated to North America around the turn of the last century, the shtetl stands for their culture, their place of origin. In contemporary children's literatme the image of the shtetl is linked to migration, the two concepts both being central to the collective identity of American Jews of Eastern European descent. By connecting the - memorized - shtetl image with migration, those

17

JACQUELINE KNÖRR AND ANGELA NUNES

stories embrace memofies of both childhood images of the country of origin and images of the target country.

Violeta Davoliute' s analysis of the diaries and memoirs of young victims of the Soviet deportations of non-Russian minorities during WWII offers unique insights into the effects of migration in its extreme forms, both on in­dividual and collective identity. As the initial solidarity of ethnically defined group victim status breaks down in the multinational Gulag environment, the child's sense of cultural and even personal identity is tested and transformed under extreme duress. Davoliute' s article considers the experience of Dalia Grinkeviciüte, deported from Lithuania to the Russian far north at the age of 14. Her "early" memoirs, written when she was 21, capture her immediate ap­prehension of the ethical and cultural dilemmas facing the deportees individu­ally and as a group. Her youthful reflections on women's recourse to prostitu­tion, religious and bourgeois morality, national identity under conditions of Russification and Sovietization, and questions of ethics and justice in captivity defy any simple categorization. Believing her memoirs to have been lost, Grinkeviciüte wrote a second version as a mature adult. A comparison of the "early" and "mature" versions of her memoirs helps to identify the immediacy ofthe early work discovered only after Grinkeviciüte's death in 1989.

Nadina Christopoulou and Sonja de Leeuw discuss the findings of a European research project on "Children in Communication about Migration" (Chicam) and compare them with existing theories on culture and identity. The research was carried out in six European countfies and focused on the so­cial and cultural worlds of refugee and migrant children. lt explored the poten­tial uses of media and communication technologies as means of empowering migrant children and enabling them to realize their potential. Christopoulou and De Leeuw focus on "family relations" to investigate the relationship be­tween media, migration and childhood. They analyze how children see them­selves positioned within these relationships, and explore how their perceptions are articulated in the process of making media productions. Using examples from the media work done by the children they analyze the children' s concep­tions of "home" and cultural identity in the context of family relations as they are being re-established in the new country.

Jan C. Oberg's contribution deals with more than 200 essays on local his­tory and the tradition of migration written by children themselves. The chil­dren under study describe their life-worlds located between Tramonti - a small mountain community near the Amalfitan Coast (Southem ltaly)- and "the North." They tell of past times rich in tradition when "innumerable cows stood in the cowshed," of "times long gone [when] one could meet people here with pure hearts free of the manifold problems that plague humanity to­day." They tell of migration as the fiend raging in Tramonti, destroying the ideallife of the past. But they also tell of fast cars and pizzerias, of the wealth ofthe North, and ofthe freedom which their migrant relatives bring with them to Tramonti on their summer vacations. The children' s narratives fluctuate be­tween idealization of migration and disapproval of it. However, more than re-

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lNTRODUCTION

flecting inner conflict their stories reveal how creatively children manage to deal with heterogeneaus environments and how actively they take part in the production of culture.

Heike Drotbohm aims at exploring how children of the second generation of Haitian immigrants in Montreal, Canada, perceive and define their position between Haiti, as their parents' reference culture, and Canada, as their host society. Through the analysis of the songs of one particular local Haitian rap group "family conflicts" and "black power" are identified as core issues with regard to the construction of personal and ethnic identity. Drotbohm finds the lyrics reflect the social realities of Haitian children in Montreal from different points of view and pinpoint the transnational dimension of Haitian ethnicity in Montreal. From the children' s perspective, Haiti serves either as a negative stereotype, referring to their parents' difficulties in coping with everyday-life in Canada or as an imaginary homeland, which helps to develop ethnic con­sciousness and pride in Haitian community life in Montreal.

H. Julia Eksner and Marjorie Faulstich Orellana address the conjunc­tion of "liminal" and Contradietory aspects in the lives of immigrant children and youths. In analyzing how children's experiences of immigration in Ger­many and the United States are translated into linguistic practices, they pre­sent a critical appraisal of liminality, a concept describing individuals' subjec­tive experiences of in-betweenness. Liminality has been used in a variety of ways in anthropological, sociological and sociolinguistic theory. The authors examine several uses of the concept, including both its original application and the various ways it has been expanded and adapted, highlighting its effi­cacy in some contexts and pointing to its limitations in others.

Angela Nunes' ethnographic research does not deal with children living through a migration process but with children who belong to the Xavante, an indigenous group of people in Brazil who were prevented from maintaining their semi-nomadic way of life which had determined their existence for cen­turies. They now settle permanently, suffering the consequences of the sudden and violent change they endured in all aspects of their sociallife. With a great deal of effort, however, the Xavante are reacting, though, and finding innova­tive ways to mend what was almost destroyed. Their hopes lie in their chil­dren. They say children can better bridge the past with the future and that children have a wisdom adults have lost. Nunes' article reveals how children actively and creatively participate in the process of reconstmcting the social life of a migrant people who have been forced to settle down.

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Y ork: Knopf.

Butler, Ian & Ian Shaw ( eds.) 1996: A Case of Neglect? Children 's Experiences and

the Sociology of Childhood. A1dershot: A vebury.

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JACQUELINE KNÖRR AND ANGELA NUNES

Caputo, Virginia 1995: Anthropology's silent 'others:' a consideration of some con­

ceptual and methodological issues for the study ofyouth and children's cultures.

In: Amit-Talai, Vered & Helena Wulff (eds.): Youth Culture. London & New

Y ork: Routledge: 19-41. Egli, Wemer M. 2003: Ich heiße Bahadur- Erbrechte und Lebensperspektiven von

Kindem in OstnepaL In: Egli, Wemer M. & Uwe Krebs (eds.): Beiträge zur

Ethnologie der Kindheit. Erziehungswissenschaftliche und kulturvergleichende

Aspekte. Studien zur Ethnopsychologie und Ethnopsychoanalyse, Vol. 5. Müns­

ter: Lit Verlag: 129-143.

Emy, Pierre 2003: Einleitung. In: Egli, Wemer M. & Uwe Krebs (eds.): Beiträge zur

Ethnologie der Kindheit. Erziehungswissenschaftliche und kulturvergleichende

Aspekte. Studien zur Ethnopsychologie und Ethnopsychoanalyse, Vol. 5. Mün­ster: Lit Verlag: 5-20.

Hardman, Charlotte 1973: Can there be an Anthropology of Children? Journal of the

Anthropological Society ofOxford 4 (2): 85-99.

Hirschfeld, Laurence 2002: Why don't anthropologists like children? American An­

thropologist 104 (2): 611-627.

James, Allison & Alan Prout (eds.) 1990: Constructing and Reconstructing Child­

hood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. Basing­

stoke: Falmer Press.

James, Allison, Chris Jenks & Alan Prout 1997: Theorizing Childhood. Cambridge:

Polity Press.

James, Allison & Adrian James 2004: Constructing Childhood: Theory, Policy and

Social Practice. New York, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Jenks, Chris 1982: The Sociology of Childhood: Essential Readings. London:

Batsford.

Jenks, Chris 1996: Childhood. London & New York: Routledge.

Lopes da Silva, Aracy & Angela Nurres 2002: Contribui<;oes da etnologia indigena

Brasileira a antropologia da infäncia. In: Lopes da Silva, Macedo & Angela

Nurres (eds.): Crianc;as Indigenas: Ensaios Antropol6gicos. Silo Paulo: Global, Marie Fapesp: 11-33.

Martins, Jose de Souza (ed.) 1993 [1991 1]: 0 Massacredos Inocentes: A Crianc;a

Sem Infdncia no Brasil. 2a. edi<;ilo, Silo Paulo: Ed. Hucitec.

Mead, Margaret 1928: Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study ofPrimitive

Youthfor Western Civilization. New York: William Morrow & Sons. Mead, Margaret 1931: Growing Up in New Guinea: A Comparative Study of Primi­

tive Education. New York: William Morrow & Sons. Mead, Margaret 1955: Theoretical setting- 1954. In: Mead & Wolfenstein: Child­

hood in Contemporary Cultures. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press: 3-

20.

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lNTRODUCTION

Nunes, Ange1a 2004: Brincando de Ser Crianc;a: Contribuic;oes da Etnologia

Indigena Brasilefra a Antropologia da Infdncia. Tese de Doutoramento,

Departamento de Antropo1ogia, ISCTE. Portugal.

Qvortrup, Jens et al. ( eds.) 1994: Childhood Matters: Social Theory, Practice and

Politics. A1dershot: Avebury.

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Comunidades. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Universitaria Santa Ürsu1a.

Toren, Christina 1993: Making history: The significance of chi1dhood cognition for

a comparative anthropo1ogy ofmind. Man (N.S.) 28: 461--478.

21

COMING OF AGE AS "THE THIRD GENERATION."

CHILDREN OF IMMIGRANTS IN BERLIN

Sabine Mannitz

Migrationresearch focusing on inuuigrants in Germany 1 has often stressed the adverse circumstances of an altogether unintended immigration process and the problematic effects of political ignorance that has prevailed in the field of integration for decades. Owing to the lack of political visions for full incmpo­ration, the situation of the so-called second and third generations of immi­grants in particular has been considered problematic. In this reading, the off­spring of the immigrant population has been depicted for the most part as be­ing trapped in a miserable structural conflict of living between two cultures. This perception insinuates that extraordinary personal and emotional crises are an inevitable part of their coming of age in Germany, forcing them to choose between competing cultures - if such a choice is deemed possible at all. This perspective is not restricted to any particular position in the fields of migration or integration policies. lt has been disseminated, for instance, by (well-meaning) pedagogues, whose major aim is to assist children with migra­tion backgrounds to catch up in German schools and to make good for their supposed deficits and disadvantages.2 Although a number of authors have come to criticise these tendencies of culturalist reification in pedagogy since the late 1980s,3 it is still a powerful discourse. The situation of inuuigrant youths is interpreted on these grounds from the point of view of collective shortcomings in the cultural realm, and culture tends to be conceptualised as a stock of conventions acquired in childhood and governing the behaviour of a person thereafter. The scenario of inevitable crises resulting out of cultural

My research sample draws upon families that immigrated into the former Federal Republic ofGermany (FRG)/West Germany. Hence, Germany refers to the FRG/ West Germany whenever the period before 1990 is at issue.

2 See for example Mertens 1980; Jerusalem 1992; Schrader, Nikles & Griese 1979. They understand enculturation as a phase of irreversible identity formation in primary socialization.

3 See Bukow & Llaroya 1988; Prengel 1993; Bukow 1996; Hamburger 1997.

23

SABINE MANNITZ

clashes appears as analmostnatural consequence. 4 The rigid concept appears as a misrepresentation not only in view of recent findings in the schalarship of ethnicity but also in view of the adolescents' own views and personal experi­ences which I studied. Nevertheless, the hegemonic discourse of cultural dif­ference will in some way influence their perceptions of self and other and shape their scopes of agency in contesting their identities. 5 In other words, it will unquestionably be within the prevalent discursive "landscapes of group identities" (Appadurai 1991) that the children and grandchildren of immi­grants have to negotiate their own possible identifications.

And yet, what does it mean to come of age in such a setting, being seen as the second or third generation of foreign immigrants? While the political dis­cussion in Germany has recognised the necessity of future immigration for several years, little attention has been devoted to the ways in which immi­grants and their children actually experienced their lives in Germany since the 1960s. From an anthropological point of view, this dimension is of particular relevance. Studying the ways in which indigenous majorities come to terms (or not) with immigrant populations and vice versa may reveal practical solu­tions developed through social interaction. This is impossible when assuming that in the course of primary socialization, "culture grows into soma" (Schrader, Nildes & Griese 1979: 58), as if a mental mould came to function as a behavioural prison.

This contribution presents empirical findings that challenge the estab­lished assumption of migrants' identity conflicts developed in the schalarship of cultural essentialism. In the study of ethnicity, there has been a growing number of works since the 1990s that falsify the traditional paradigm which defined ethnic identity as a given and, instead, illustrate the situational and contextual, hence fluid, character of ethnic as well as religious or other social identifications.6 Contrary to primordialist hypotheses, processes in social identification are far more complex. Identities can be intemally heterogeneaus and culture appears as an interactive field of discursive contestations. 7 Evi­dently, the very falsification of cultural essentialism applies not only to the biographical situations of migrants. However, their certainties are challenged

4 This faction within "intercultural pedagogy" argues for the most part without presenting any corresponding empirical data (see Bründel & Hurrelmann 1995; Gernende et al. 1999; Czock 1993; Schepker & Eberding 1996). Mu1ticulturalism is based on the same concept, in princip1e, i.e. considering peop1e as representa­tives of a collective rather than as individua1s. It does, however, invest the idea of distinctiveness with a positive rather than a negative bias. Fora critique see Leg­gewie 1989; Radtke 1995; 1996; Bommes 1996; Baumann 1999. Treibe1 (2003) provides a systematic review of the different conceptua1 approaches to migration in German scho1arship.

5 Mills 1997: 17. 6 See, e.g., Hal11990; Eriksen 1993; A1-Azmeh 1993; Barth 1994. 7 See, e.g., Hall 1990; Schiffauer 1991; Harrnerz 1992; Kaschuba 1995; Baumann

1996, 1999; Rogers & Vertovec 1995; Baumann & Gingrich 2004.

24

COMING OF AGE AS "THE THIRD GENERATION"

more often and to greater extents than those of indigenous populations whose cultural or ethnic particularities are hardly ever contested. Given the expecta­tion that international mobility becomes more and more relevant in the future, it is therefore long overdue to consider the immigrant experience.

The essay deals with a number of adolescents from labour immigrant farnilies in Berlin who developed various forms of transnational identification and displayed a notable competence in double cultural agency under the cir­cumstances of a prevalent culturalist, and negatively biased discourse. To study these phenomena in context, I will briefly sketch the Contradietory trends that mark the post-war history of immigration on the one hand, and the political ambitions to foster a post-national collective identity in the Federal Republic of Germany on the other. I will then look into the daily routines in a school as one prominent site where cohabitation norms are foregrounded in the lives of children and adolescents. 8 Even ifthey reject what is suggested to them, the interaction is part of the dialectical process by means of which young people become familiar with hegemonic boundary concepts and define their own positions. In order to specify how educational norms may influence the process of social integration in general and to demonstrate the position of migrant minorities in relation to the indigenous German majority in particular, I shall review the general character of education for citizenship in Germany. Following an account ofthe normative agenda, the question ofhow immigrant diversity is handled practically in a school in Berlin will be introduced. Fi­nally, I will present the identity-related practices applied by adolescents from immigrant farnilies. How do these young people cope with the ambivalent messages regarding possible options of associating and dissociating them­selves? Apparently, they partly conformed to and partly subverted the com­mon narrations about them. I shall argue that such ways of conflating compet­ing identity models are typical acts of transnationalization in that they refer to imagined "social fields that cross national boundaries," and thereby aim to "reconfigure space" when positioning themselves (Basch et al. 1994: 22, 28-34). This resourceful double agency unfolded, however, as stigma manage­ment, to cope with a lack of recognition. Moreover, it remains as yet tied to an imagined transnational space that differs from the dominant imagery of "us" and "them" in Germany. These limitations are discussed in the conclusion.

8 The empirical data were collected during ten months of fieldwork in a secondary school in Berlin-Neukölln during the 1996/97 term, and from interviews I con­ducted with young people from migrant families (15-17 and 20-22 years of age) between 1998 and 2001. The interviewees had been pupils in the above men­tioned school while I was doing research there. The initial fieldwork was part of the research project, "State, School, and Ethnicity" funded by the Volkswagen Foundation 1996-1999. All direct citations, whether single terms or whole sen­tences are those of the people who interacted in the setting of this school. Given the limited space, they cannot be portrayed here as individuals and the findings are only quoted very briefly. For more details see Schiffauer et al. 2004.

25

SABINE MANNITZ

Background: The reception of labour immigrants in postwar Germany

Although the hiring of foreign labourers has been part and parcel of the eco­nomic and social recovery of West Germany after World War II, immigration has never been acknowledged favourably by German politics and society in general. Instead, the project of hiring labourers from abroad on a temporary basis gradually developed into de facto immigration, unintended on the part of both Germansand so-called "guestworkers." The resulting demographic mul­tinationalization has therefore only waveringly begun to enter collective con­sciousness.9 The ambivalence is reflected in the prevalent conceptualization of migrants and immigration in Germany. lt also influences the circumstances under which children of immigrants come of age in Germany. Even though we are talking here not only of the sons and daughters but meanwhile also of the grandsans and granddaughters of the first generation "guestworkers," theseoffspring arestill perceived- e.g. in media discourseandin school text­books - as "second and third generations" of foreigners rather than as equal fellow citizens. The following brief account will illustrate the historical back­gmund of this perception scheme.

Beginning in the early 1960s, West Germany suffered a dramatic shortage of labour because the closing of the border between the two German states prevented people in the Eastern parts from entering the Western zones or commuting in between them. To solve this problem, the recmitment of for­eign "guestworkers" (Gastarbeiter) was seen as necessary and useful. Labour immigration was supposed to work by rotation, with eventual repatriation be­ing taken for granted- both by the German public and by most migrant work­ers as weil. When Germany' s economy took a downward turn in the early 1970s, the federal govemment favoured reducing the number of foreign workers. A recruitment freeze and return incentives were introduced, but this resulted, contrary to the intentions, in increased immigration since many peo­ple used the remaining window of opportunity for the immigration of rela­tives, fearing that more restrictions would follow .10

Irrespective of the actual settlement of the "guestworkers" in West Ger­many, the official political doctrine that Germany was not an immigration country continued until the end of the 1990s. The fact that a considerable number of foreign nationals bad become part of the population surely needed to be dealt with; however, no concepts were developed regarding any long­term incorporation of immigrants, and state authorities continued to respond on an ad hoc basis. The outcome was a mixture of partial inclusion and exclu­sion. The legal foreigner status entailed restrictions, particularly in terms of rights to formal political participation. With regard to most requirements and routines of daily life however - the job market, civil society institutions, the

9 Schiffauer 1993: 195-198. 10 Münz, Seifert & Ulrich ( 1997) provide a detai1ed account.

26

COMING OF AGE AS "THE THIRD GENERATION"

education system and most welfare benefits - few exclusions were made. Hence, the presence of foreigners acquired a form of normalcy despite the lack of official efforts encouraging the former "guestworkers" to remain in the country and become German nationals. West Germany was thus "[ ... ]not only an ambivalent de facto immigration country with an inclusive welfare policy and an exclusive citizenship policy. The foreign population developing out of the earlier "guestworker population" had unexpectedly and without any corre­sponding convergence on the part of the obstinate immigration country devel­oped into an immigration situation" (Bade 2000: 338).

There are reasons to criticise this unsystematic handling of the situation, as evidenced by political omissions and failure to take the initiative in re­sponding to a de facto immigration process. Y et in spite of the range of missed opportunities to improve the immigrants' reception in Germany through political and legal measures, it seems inadequate to conceive of this immigration history in terms of failure. The present situation does not corre­spond to the goal of temporary residence that once motivated both German politics and the labour migrants themselves. Yet their extensive inclusion into German civil society and their near equal entitlement to the benefits of the welfare state has had the effect that the immigrant population in Germany has achieved high levels of societal participation. In some respects this surpasses what countfies with more inclusive integration policies, such as the Nether­lands, have accomplished. 11 While most immigrants remained excluded from formal political citizenship in Germany, they were included on nearly all other informallevels of participation in public life. State school education is a good example of this ambivalent situation.

Education for citizenship under pressure

Schools function as important communication channels between the state and its citizens as well as between various social groups. Schools are a relay point between generations, between public and private and, last but not least, be­tween majorities and minorities. lt is hence an important site for integrating social differences, for transmitting shared mles and restrictions, civic norms and values and for promoting a collective imagery of one's own group vis-a­vis others. Among other things, school teaches children how merit can be eamed, how conflicts should best be handled and how participation in the pol­ity should be practised in a given society. As part of this education for citizen­ship, schooling promotes particular ideals from preferred argumentative styles to the norms and limits of the country's civil and political culture; in brief, it functions as a force for enculturation. 12 Because of this role in organising so­cialization in accordance with the principles of the common social and politi-

11 Thränhardt 2000. 12 Bourdieu & Passeron 1977; Ge11ner 1983; Harker 1984; Baumann 2004.

27

SABINE MANNITZ

cal order, schools are excellent places to study the projections and also the changes in how a nation defines itself and others.

Historically, state citizenship education followed a nationalist progranuue, which both reflected and produced "cleavages based on nation and language" (Finaldi & Shore 2000: 2). This model of projecting and creating collective identities as national ones has been highly effective in constructing, shaping, and reproducing nations and "their" states as reified actors of early moder­nity .13 Social cohesion was created by stressing collective traits of one' s own nation in contrast to those of other nations. However, several developments have led to an undermining of the conventional nation-state arrangement combining social and civic rights with territorial consolidation and the politi­cal sovereignty of its "imagined conuuunity ," as Benedict Anderson has phrased it (Anderson 1991). In the field of education across Europe, major changes resulting from increased societal heterogeneity, whether intended or not, and of the political project of transnationalization within the European Union can be noted. In theory, this eases the incorporation of newcomers.

Twentieth century Europe has undergone various processes that might be regarded as instances of denationalization: increased immigration has made populations more multi-ethnic and multi-national; the project of European unification qualifies the national nature of collective identities; and, as has been said for Germany, many forms of legitimate representation as well as po­litical participation are no Ionger tied to the formal condition of nationality .14

In the wake of these changes, schools must initiate new cognitive processes: whether their pupils are German nationals, long or short term residents, re­cently arrived refugees, with or without expectation of repatriation - in short, irrespective of their students' origins - schools are expected, at the very least, to prepare adolescents for their lives as possible future citizens. Their aim of enculturation has thereby come to relate to the political culture of civil soci­ety, rather than to the nation-state itself:

[N]ation-state schools are no langer schools of nationalism, yet we continue to rec­ognize that state-directed schooling is always related to identity-shaping purposes within the framework of the nation-state. [ ... ] Civil enculturation in its currently ob­servable form strives hard at managing the seemingly paradoxical: to inculcate pu­pils with a civil culture that is nationally specific, yet norrnatively open to all regard­less of their backgrounds, identifications or possible loyalties (Baumann 2004: 10-13).

In order to serve this purpose, educational representations of nationhood and their collective symbols have undergone remarkable changes in W estem Europe in the second half of the 201

h century. With the integrative forces at work in the European Union, the traditional fortifications of the nation con­cept appear to have been rethought. Although adhering to locally and nation-

13 Gellner 1983; Anderson 1991. 14 A sampling on this topic from the social sciences might include Sassen 1996;

Soysal 1994; Joppke 1998; Koopmans & Statham 1999; Kastoryano 2002.

28

COMING OF AGE AS "THE THIRD GENERATION"

ally specific understandings, there is a general trend towards a "Europeaniza­tion" of issues. 15 Symbols of national identities or national "heroes" figure less prorninently than they did 50 years ago. Present-day teaching materials throughout Western Europe clearly demonstrate a retreat from the notion of national identities revolving around fixed sets of attributes, traditions and cul­tural heritages. 16 Negative stereotypes of other European nations have also been largely removed from these media. Furthermore, increasing emphasis is put on broadly defined ideals such as those of the Enlightenment and liberal democracy .Abstract principles are stressed of democracy, human rights and social justice in order to foster a European identity in the schools. 17

In (West) Germany, the trend towards denationalization of civic education took a variety of forms since the end of World War II. The totalitarian experi­ence left nationalism so discredited that the only feasible projection for re­gaining a positive self-image and some political influence after 1945 was placed in the European context. This can clearly be seen in the normative agenda to guide socialization in state institutions. The federal state of Berlin, for example, features a rejection of national arrogance in its constitutional preamble, and this tone is noticeable throughout the educational progranune of the city-state. Already in the seventh grade teaching of geography 18 many topics are related to the common econornic, political and social space of the European Union. Europeanization and globalization are treated as "World Studies" in grades 9 and 10, which combines social studies, history, civics, geography and economics. 19 Children are to be given an introduction to Euro­pean and global interrelatedness, international dependencies and migration is­sues, all of which are meant to contribute to the students' abilities to partici­pate in democracy "in a society of rapid social change," and irrespective of their nationalities. 20

However, such lofty ambitions are difficult to translate into practice, and it does not make matters easier that education policies are ideological battle­fields in themselves. Moreover, curricula and textbook Supervision fall into the legislation of the respective federal states in Germany and are subject to a

15 This is one result ofthe project, "Rethinking Nation-State Identities in the New Europe: A Cross-National Study of School Curricula and Textbooks" (www.one­europe.ac.uk, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK 1999-2002), in which I was involved as a Research Officer. Our study was fo­cused upon history and civics textbooks and curricula from four European case countries since the 1950s. The idea of Europe has entered teaching programmes extensively as a theoretical concept while the specific appropriations vary from country to country. For examples from the French and the German case-studies see Bertilotti, Mannitz, & Soysal2005.

16 See Bertilotti, Mannitz & Soysal2005. 17 See Pingell995: xi-xii, 2001. 18 Geography Curriculum: Rahmenplan Erdkunde 7, 2001. 19 World Studies Curriculum: Rahmenplan Weltkunde 9 & 10,2001. 20 Syllabi of Political Education: Zur Zielsetzung und Praxis Politischer Bildung in

der Berliner Schule, 2001.

29

SABINE MANNITZ

diversity of funding measures, meaning that schools are located not only in very different social, but likewise in very different institutional and financial environments. The extent to which revised textbooks can actually be found in schools depends on a number ofvariables also. In most ofBerlin's schools the equipment is substandard and outdated, since the city-state has been near bankmptcy for many years. Many of the textbooks used in the school where my research took place dated from the early 1980s, and some were unchanged reprints from even older editions. Thus, the impressive normative rhetoric at the official level as well as with regard to the latest textbook editions is not implemented at the level of school socialization. 21 Furthermore, the ambition to strengthen a European rather than a national consciousness seems to be limited by the fact that the vision of an integrated Europe is far from the eve­ryday experience of school children.

The gap between the normative discourse in favour of transnationalization in civic education plarming on the one hand and social reality on the other is noteworthy. Y et, it does not render the overall tendency obsolete. Lessons have been drawn from the experience of nationalist hubris in Germany, so that children are no Ionger being socialised in terms of the "banal nationalism" (Billig 1995) in its traditional meaning of spreading nationalist symbols of identity by way of everyday routines. Nevertheless, the nation-states are still important. They act as gatekeepers for the brokerage of rights, they constitute social sites for agency and are the most tangible interlocutors for the civil public. Y oung people need to leam how to pursue their interests within this national public in which the relevant argumentative methods are as particular as the national political cultures and their civic conventions. Indeed, the study on "State, School, and Ethnicity" carried out in various European countries22

was able to confirm that pupils are socialised within nationally specific fields and standards of discourse, which are, however, understood now as being compatible with the broader concepts of Europeanness. 23 In the German case, especially, collective self-reference is no Ionger based on any nationally codi­fied concept but on the post -war conception of being part of the W estem world of democracies. In other words, a shift has taken place from explicit na­tionalism to implicit, more instrumental forms of establishing collectivity. This shift has not simply ruled out the relevance of national boundaries. lt in­stead produces its own peculiar boundary effects.

The fact that parts ofthe agenda are denationalised while others arenot re­sults in a complex set of competing expectations. The main tension stems from the fact that, "the nation-state school has [ ... ] [in the meantime] takenon two missions at once: it is expected to perpetuate a sense of nation-state con­tinuity but also to integrate non-nationals and first-generation citizens into the democratic project of equalizing chances" (Baumann 2004: 1). The different

21 Leclerq 1995: 13-14. 22 Seenote 12 for more information on the study. 23 Schiffauer et al. 2004.

30

COMING OF AGE AS "THE THIRD GENERATION"

layers of belonging, entitlement and incorporation are thus multiple and somewhat contradictory. Diversity and the crossing of national borders appear to be cherished on the rather abstract and vague level of a desirable European community formation. With regard to concrete labour immigrant populations, they are received less enthusiastically, especially when the immigrants arenot (considered) Europeans. As a result, adolescents can be expected to come to terms with competing discursive strands today which delineate and assess di­versity from different angles. 24 Even though being nationally specific, these fields of discourse must not be mistaken for any Straightforward pressure to­wards, e.g., "Germanization." After all, young foreigners also participate in and influence the interaction taking place. Besides, owing to the particular ambiguity prevailing with regard to immigration in Germany, no program­matic assimilation policy has been developed here.

Immigrant Diversity in a Berlin School

Although all children encounter axiomatic mles and social concepts most sys­tematically at school, this does entail special consequences for those from immigrant farnilies. For one thing, they are confronted personally with domi­nant conceptualizations and evaluations of collective difference. These take their most tangible form in the treatment of migration-related topics in teach­ing and in the practical handling of immigrant diversity in everyday school life. In both respects, the site of my study in Berlin was marked by assess­ments that mn counter the quoted programme ideal in "world studies," which largely represents the vision of "one-world" without prejudices.

The history and geography textbooks used in the school I studied depict a world of harsh differences. When dealing with migration and the most rele­vant emigration countries25 the latterare frequently qualified as underdevel­oped and divided by acute inner conflicts, a negative performance often re­lated to parochial cultural traditions such as the caste system in India26 or clan loyalties in sub-Saharan Africa27

. An example that affects the image of Turk­ish immigrants explicitly is the grade 8 geography textbook. The chapter deal­ing with Turkey starts with the statement that the country suffers from severe development contrasts. lt goes on to explain that the people who made their

24 See Mannitz 2004. 25 Geography textbooks tend to present selected countfies because of their emigrant

populations these days. This has the twofold motivation ( 1) to improve knowl­edge about the immigrants and enhance mutual understanding and (2) to facili­tate identification by pupils of migrant origin with the teaching programme. Both of these intentions may be counteracted by the stereotypical way in which the emigration countries are presented, that is, largely in terms of shortcomings and deficits (see Lütkes & Klüter 1995; Stöber 2001 ).

26 Brodengeier et al. 1996: 99. 27 Krauter & Rother 1988: 44.

31

SABINE MANNITZ

way to Germany beginning in the 1960s came from the least developed parts of Turkey. Different from their fellow nationals in Istanbul, these migrants are said to have very little in common with Central Europeans:

Inhabitants of Istanbul have more in common with Central Europeans than with the inhabitants of eastem Anatolian villages. [ ... ]In the 19th century, [ ... ] most reforms remairred restricted to Istanbul and the westem parts ofthe country. [ ... ] The Turkish Republic tried to overcome its inferiority in relation to the European industrial na­tions independently. [ ... ] The extreme imbalance was to be levelled out. However, the new state's limited economic power prevented any considerable success. [ ... ] Fi­nally, a rural migration drift started. Urban conglomerations like Istanbul and the Mannara region were the main destinations of this irrtemal migration. After 1961, many migrants tried to find work in the industrialised countfies of Central and West­ern Europe (Krauter & Rother 1988: 56-59).

In the same vein, migration is portrayed in many cases as being triggered mostly by push factors. Pull factors are hardly ever mentioned. While mi­grants are thus associated with poverty and other problems intrinsic to the country or the region of origin, the permanent presence of immigrants in Germany is presented as having imported problems. This is an issue brought forward in subjects like history or social studies also. In the history textbook used at the school of my research, it reads as follows in the volume for grade 9:

Other difficulties resulted from the large number of immigrants, of foreigners andre­tuming emigrants [Aussiedler] of German descent from Eastem European countries, who streamed into the Federal Republic. Ahnost five million foreigners lived herein 1990 including 1.5 million Turks. Many came because they expected better living conditions than in their home countries. Others requested asylum because they were being persecuted for political or religious reasons at home. They were alllookingfor housing and work. Additionally, there are language barriers, the clash of cultural differences and problems ofintegration (Ebeling & Birkenfeld 1991: 109; emphasis added).

In other words, immigrants appear as recipients who reap advantages from be­ing in Germany, while Germans are not explained how they gain from the presence of immigrants. From these elements a problematic causal chain sug­gests itself: The immigrants' cultures of origin involve poverty and back­wardness, these being the cause ofboth emigration and the burden which im­migrants bring with them. Thus, an implicit concept of culture as a fixed col­lective disposition lacking intemal diversity may legitimise a low opinion of the others, who altogether appear to represent backward mentalities.28 Theo-

28 More details are discussed in Mannitz & Schiffauer 2004. Our findings have been confirmed by other research projects. See, e.g., the study by Hormel & Scherr 2004, or the reports on the study "Images of others" carried out at the University of Frankfurt/Main. The latter analysis shows that the image of immi­grant youths as betwixt and between (zwischen zwei Stühlen) is an established metaphor in teaching materials for social studies in junior secondary schools

32

COMING OF AGE AS "THE THIRD GENERATION"

retically, this negative message is still open to discussion and even invalida­tion through critical use of textbook representation in teaching. But my par­ticipant observation carried out in classrooms over a period of ten months did not reveal many instances of such a critical approach.

The secondary school in the Berlin borough of Neukölln had large num­bers of pupils from various foreign nationalities, those from Turkish, Leba­nese and (former) Yugoslavian families being most numerous. How was their presence understood to affect daily school life? The briefest answer is that they were considered a majorprob lern. Many teachers expressed the view that the "oriental pupils in particular" posed great difficulties because of their "completely different" upbringing and culture. In the same vein, these stu­dents' knowledge of other languages was not seen as any asset or useful skill but rather as a handicap that bindered their participation, social integration, and individual chances for success in German society. The immigrant parents, moreover, tended to be perceived by most of the teaching staff as mere sources of obstmction. They were believed to follow a counter-productive agenda, focusing all of their attention on their own cultural milieu instead of taking part in the wider society and assisting their children to do the same in school. The negative cliche of migrant youth occupying a space "between," or even as "tom between" different cultures was reproduced in many instances. A number of teachers went a step further and complained about the altogether negative impact of the large number of foreign pupils on their German peers, the effect being a "reactionary assimilation process" among German pupils, as one teacher put it. According to him, the German pupils were adapting to a higher level of aggression and other bad habits introduced by the foreigners. He argued that the Germans had behaved better and had achieved more when the foreigners had been less numerous.

To contextualise this negative appraisal, one needs to take into considera­tion that schools with high rates of pupils from immigrant families are often situated in socio-economically weak or "high risk" neighbourhoods. This is also the case in Berlin. A combination of high rates of unemployment and welfare recipients, bad housing conditions and populations consisting of many and rather poorly skilled immigrants characterised the outlying districts of Berlin where most pupils resided. Such difficult social conditions render an impact on school since pupils from underprivileged farnilies of whatever na­tionality tend to lack linguistic and social skills, which are important prerequi­sites for successful schooling. Y et, quite different from approaches chosen in other European countfies - e.g. in France, the UK or in Sweden- where addi­tional resources are allocated to Counterbalance negative circumstances from home and cope with the particular challenges immigrants are facing, in Ger­many most schools in "high risk" neighbourhoods are usually not better but even more poorly equipped than average. This issue has received increased at-

(Höhne, Kunz & Radtke 1999, 2000). As regards the negative image of migra­tion and nomadism see Treibel2003: 43 ff.

33

SABINE MANNITZ

tention since the publication of the latest OECD PIZA study (Baumert et al. 2001). Children from immigrant families proved to be significantly less skilled than their German peers in reading and comprehension of the German language. And they came up much worse than pupils from comparative immi­grant groups in other countries of the OECD survey. This results in a serious disadvantage. For the pupils concemed, opportunities are limited if they lack the basic prerequisite of mastering the residential country's lingua .franca. Conversely, Germany obviously missed chances of making good use of its human resource potential. 29

In Berlin, the poor material situation ofthe school and the substandard liv­ing conditions at home created stress for both teachers and students. lt re­sulted in many teachers willingly accepting the thesis of cultural differences as the outstanding explanation for the difficulties encountered. The cultural othemess of their "oriental pupils" easily ruled out alternative explanations such as the impact of social class or individual problems, be it in the context of a student's social behaviour, his or her lack of progress in class, or a girl's refusal to join a class outing. Aggressive behaviour was less interpreted as in­dicating pressure deriving from deprived living conditions but more as ex­pressions of role models rooted in "other cultures." One of the teachers ex­plained to me as follows why the presence of the "oriental pupils" had nega­tive effects in his view on the overall situation in school: "Especially among foreign pupils, behaviour is following backward role models. [ ... ] There is al­most no possibility of solving conflicts verbally, no willingness to compro­mise. And with our large proportion of oriental students, there are many fail­ings in the area of tensions between male and female teenagers."

A more empathetic colleague of his judged that these pupils were victims of circumstance:

Turkish parents fail insofar as little value is placed on acquisition of the German lan­guage. Our students' Turkish parents throw their children into the German school system without any assistance. Turkish boys especially are often confronted with such umeal expectations from their parents that many are in danger of breaking down. This pressure naturally produces behaviours that we feel to be very unpleas­ant. [ ... ]My opinion isthat the Turkish Parents' Association fails completely.

A third teacher, reacting to two Turkish students whom she heard talking in their mother tongue, was explicit on why integration of the Turks in Germany failed: "Y ou speak Turkish, you stay in your own circles, you go shopping only in Turkish shops. Integration cannot work like that!"

29 The causes of this Iose-lose-situation are numerous but experts agree that the socio-economic origin of a child determines school success to an extraordinarily high degree in the German school system. If their social backgrounds are sub­standard, pupils from migrant families seem to be subject to twofold processes of systemic discrimination of the disadvantaged and of the institution's incapability to cope with heterogeneity as such.

34

COMING OF AGE AS "THE THIRD GENERATION"

As these examples show, the foreign students, and especially the "orien­tal" innnigrants among them, were perceived as incapable of fulfilling the model proposed for them. In the view of the quoted teachers, the Turkish families represented the cultural antipode to modernity and civilization, and as such were assumed to reproduce outdated gender roles, condone oppressive educational methods and authoritarianism, and insist on maintaining various peculiar cultural traditions - all of which were regarded as irreconcilable with the ambitious aspiration to follow the universalistic ideals of Europeanised Germany.

To some degree, this juxtaposition of the underdeveloped Orient vis-a-vis the advanced Europe sounds familiarly similar to arguments compiled thirty years ago in defining orientalism.30 But unlike the ambivalence of conven­tional orientalism, which combined negative stereotyping with an idealization of the mysterious and fascinating Orient, comments and assessments made by numerous German teachers contained no positive connotations at all. When­ever labour innnigrants and their children were at issue, a self-evident cultural hierarchy prevailed: the "oriental" innnigrants were seen as a specific group of foreigners, whose different cultures were reminiscent of earlier stages in communal life, resulted in social divisions and a backlash in the "host soci­ety" - namely the quoted "reactionary" influence of German peers. According to many teachers' understanding "the orientals," more so than other innni­grant groups, were basically reluctant to adopt anything of the modern Ger­man Iifestyle. They may not even be wrong in some of their assessments of individual students or families. However, such judgements were readily trans­ferred to larger groups of foreigners, i.e. "the Turks" or "the orientals." The collective image of these others was that of notorious troublemakers, the rea­son being their different cultural backgrounds.

The teachers' integration efforts were, however, not directed in favour of any "culture" flaggedas German either. From their side31 there was clearly no sympathy with narratives of German (or any other) national culture and tradi­tions. Their ideals drew upon the universal value of social modernity, rational­ism, liberalism and pluralism, nothing particular to Germany. Nevertheless, since these ideals were perceived as being rooted in the historical experience of central Europe, in the shape of the Enlightenment and the European spirit of overcoming a terrible nationalist past, the "orientals" not sharing this ex­perience seemed destined to remain a negative contrast group.

30 Said 1978. 31 Many of the teachers had been influenced by the anti-authoritarian student re­

volts and the social movements that followed in the 1970s. Negative evaluation of Germanness is not restricted to this political generation but it appears as a strong common outlook. Besides, the revolts may have contributed also to estab­lishing reserved views ofthe nation in the wider society. By the end ofthe 1990s, a representative survey on German national identity noted an altogether "strong push in a negative direction" (Rossteutscher 1997: 624 ).

35

SABINE MANNITZ

Yet in effect, the ill-famed children from migrant families appeared to be both insiders and outsiders at the same time. While they represented essential otherness in the dominant narration, the routine of everyday life implied that one had to come to terms with them as de facto fellow citizens. This led to expectations among teachers that their "foreign" pupils would somehow have to surmount their otherness. And again this carried ambivalent implications: How can an individual overcome his or her cultural otherness when this is un­derstood as being a "mentality" or an iron cage of a collective cultural dispo­sition? Opinions and expectations of teachers and peers varied on this point. Each possible positioning meant social compliances and breaches, and pupils could hardly avoid or remain disengaged from such confrontations. These combined factors make school a place where interactions take place at differ­ent levels of integration and disintegration: standards of articulating one's po­sition are established within the existing power relations whilst being subject to continuous Contestation also.

Creative conflations: The foreigner experience as an asset

Neither the experience of relatively consistent negative stereotyping of their own backgrounds, nor the overall critical representation of Germanness pre­vented my young interlocutors in Berlin from remaining both in the foreigner category and from becoming German in some ways. I shall try to explain why.

Children from migrant families do not only encounter the idea of cultural differences and collectively attributed mentalities in school. At home, many are confronted with similar concepts when their parents insist on preserving certain cultural boundaries in relation to "the Germans," boundaries that are stressed out of fear of losing their children in a cultural sense as a minority. Having grown up with these complementary ideas, discourses, practices, and expectations relating to cultural difference, the adolescents I met in Berlin re­produced the hegemonic concept frequently. They claimed that different cul­tural collectivities based on nationality or religion were matters of fact and ar­ticulated this assumption through contrasting comparisons. The range varied though: in some cases the "individualist Western Iifestyle" was pitted against "our countfies that are bound to religion, customs, and tradition," or "modern Muslims" were contrasted with "traditional Muslims." In other cases what mattered most was the difference between "Christian Europe" and "the Mus­lim world," or that between Christian and Muslim foreigners in Germany. Y et another contrasting dualism was that between Germans from West Berlin and "the Nazis from the East." In spite of these bold and generalising classifica­tions, the students' personal experience of cultural distance and their own identifications differed from situation to situation. Being a foreigner, being from West Berlin, being a Muslim or a Turk had different meanings under dif­ferent social circumstances. Sometimes the Germans served as the main con-

36

COMING OF AGE AS "THE THIRD GENERATION"

trast group, sometimes the same person who had just quoted the boundary be­tween Turks and Germans as significant described the own family with strongest feelings of alienation, like 19-year-old Mehabad: "I come home and everything is completely different from outside. At home the things that mat­ter are basically very unimportant to me, really very, very unimportant and of no significance!"

Despite the apparent confusion, a general argumentative pattem marked these narrations: although the view that cultural differences existed between the home and German public spaces was widely conformed to, the children of immigrants themselves did not want to be forced into any exclusive category. The reason forthiswas that switching between the two "worlds" or "cultures" and acting in both was not regarded as a trap or a major problem. The over­whelming majority did not see themselves as victims of circumstance but as protagonists of an unforeseen interim stage. There was a shared feeling that none of the pre-defined characteristics attributed to them matched their own mixed experiences. Thus, students from immigrant families of all kinds often preferred to resort to the vague common identity of being "foreigner." While being also aware of their friends' various origins, the national or ethnic differ­ences tended to be levelled out within this residual in-group of "the foreign­ers." In one discussion involving young people from Turkish, Palestinian, Greek, Albanian, Croatian and Sri Lankan families, participants all agreed that their "foreign parents" had raised them differently than Germany parents had raised their peers. The main boundary was hence drawn along the line of nationality yet it was understood as being related to processes of cultural re­production.

The home and the social world outside seemed to represent a discrepancy of expectations to all children from migrant families, yet one that could be handled according to situation. The "foreign" adolescents agreed that they en­countered difficulties now and then, requiring extra competence in mediation and placing considerable demands on them psychologically when they refused to fulfil the role their families expected of them, namely that of future guardi­ans of their parents' original culture in the diaspora. Nevertheless, confidence in their own capacity to ultimately master these expectations prevailed over fmstration. They made a virtue of commuting between diverse spheres, of managing stigmatization and were very well aware of their competence with regard to double "cultural" agency. The fall-back category of the "foreigner" served this purpose on numerous levels: lt functioned to appease their parents' fears of the next generation' s Germanization by stressing a certain distance from "the Germans." At the same time, it was a means of maintaining a dis­tinct position vis-a-vis the indigenous German population while not stressing one's ownparticular origin, i.e. possibly one's special stigma ifbelonging to the "oriental" category of immigrants. The extended concept of "the for­eigners" also fostered solidarity among the different national minorities. As a common denominator, it allowed its members to take a joint stand substanti­ated by similar, shared experiences of exclusion.

37

SABINE MANNITZ

While many pupils in the multi-national networks of "foreigners" had no objections against the general assessment that national groups possessed dif­ferent mentalities, they did not take this personally. Tmly problematic cultural othemess was, in their view, embodied by their elders and relatives "back home." They generally found it hard to bear their parents' home environments for more than short periods of time. 20-year-old Rashirn explained his feel­ings of alienation this way:

Living here in Germany, we see many things differently. When I try to question some things over there [i.e. in Kosovo], I am always told, 'No, we don't do that, that doesn't suit us, it's not our tradition and culture, that's a matter of honour, we don't do things like that. .. ' Living in Germany has given me a different way of thinking. When I imagine what I would have been like, had I grown up in Kosovo ... , I would have had a completely different idea ofthe world, absolutely! The people there think completely differently.

Similar to this young man, many other children of immigrants saw their very competence in questioning matters, discussing and searching for compromise as the core of a cultural change that their own generation but not the one of their parents had undergone in Germany. A girl from a Greek family put it like this: "I am in any case convinced- and that is exactly what my parents mean by 'behaving German' - that you must also be able to compromise, oth­erwise it doesn't work." About her parents she thought: "They arenot used to discussing things or finding interim solutions."

Personal development and the ability to tolerate controversy, to discuss and solve conflicts by accepting compromise was seen as a chance, which their parents had never had, let alone family members who had not emigrated, because these attributes were conceptualised as typical of German life. In the words of a girl from a Tamil family, "One can develop much better here than in our own countries." Accordingly, the notion ofmentality recurred regularly when these young people spoke about their parents' countries of emigration where they regarded socialization circumstances as being altogether limited. In effect, the emigration societies appeared as if frozen in a state of timeless traditionalism, not allowing for any dynamic change.

The "narrow-mindedness" of relatives who had never been abroad and their "weird expectations and distorted ideas" about life in Germany bothered many young people and gave them the impression that the "authentic" cul­tures of the emigration countries were, in fact, as backward as the German school textbooks portrayed them to be. Rashirn once commented that, "coun­tries that are economically weak are always bound to religion, customs, and tradition." This nexus of culture as a locational factor for poor economic cir­cumstances, which in their turn are assessed as being responsible for conflicts and instability, sounds quite familiar: lt is one of the recurrent lines of argu­ment followed in the teaching about underdeveloped countries, traditional cul­ture and the push-factors for migration. The pupils had obviously got the mes­sage and applied it to the countfies of their families' origin. Just as their own

38

COMING OF AGE AS "THE THIRD GENERATION"

parents and relatives were judged as holding on to traditional norms and being unable to discuss controversial subjects, their original national societies were regarded as a whole as canying the same deficiency. Traditions appeared hence as a kind of "tied and tagged baggage" (Baumann 1999: 94 ), which lim­its the scope for possible development. Given the rather negative evaluation attached to cultural traditions, my interlocutors showed hardly any interest in them. However, since the young people saw themselves as "foreigners" in Germany rather than as representatives of a particular national, ethnic or reli­gious group, the suggested parochialism of traditions was of no real concem for their own self-images.

And yet, in situations of conflict between "foreigners" and "Germans," the allocation table with the reified categories tumed out to reach a dead end. The underlying imbalance in power relations suddenly became visible when the so-called foreigners felt they were being provoked to justify themselves or their supposed original cultures. While German students were able to use the negative bias of "traditional cultures" against "the foreigners," the latter in turn had difficulty in defending concepts they could not fully subscribe to, nor were they willing to accept the stigmatization for themselves. If their German peers saw no necessity to seek intersecting commonalties, such situations were prone to result in a breakdown of communication and to reconfirm the cliche of the Germans being a bounded contrast group, even in the eyes of those "foreigners" who represented supposedly German ways of behaviour at their homes. 32

In line with the stereotypes prevailing at school, many pupils from migrant farnilies accused their parents indeed of insisting on the maintenance of group boundaries and traditions that had lost any meaning among their own peer­group. Being different from "the Germans" did not imply identification with any particular group of origin and vice versa. This was a matter of farnily con­flict. To some extent many of the young "foreigners" felt they had, in fact, be­come "Germanised" as their parents noticed with displeasure. Yet any direct identification with "becoming German" was inconceivable. This was not just because their German peers denied them access to their in-group but also due to the ambivalent feelings about Germanness in itself. As one young woman explained: "One cannot feel one is a German, and somehow I don't want to think of myself as German, since the idea ofbeing 'typically German' is a de­terrent in itself!"

lt appears the "foreign" adolescents were thoroughly enculturated into the prevailing discursive conventions of German self-reflection and had fully in­temalised its negative connotations. The latter make identification as German difficult for native Germans as well as for immigrants. Since hybridity is not (yet) foreseen in the conceptualization of Germanness, immigrants are, how­ever, confronted in the public with an either/or option with regard to their identification as Germans and as members of a nation they or their parents

32 See Mannitz 2001.

39

SABINE MANNITZ

originated from. The boundaries of Germanness cannot be blurred or shifted as easily as is the case, for example, with Britishness. 33 And the option of Eu­ropeanness remains a restricted category for most of the "foreigners" not only because of its remoteness from daily business, but also because it continues, in its dominant interpretations, to exclude those denizens with "oriental" ori­gins.

The self-positioning as being "foreigners in Germany" is a remarkable way out of this conceptual dilemma for it draws upon assumed othemess as a resource, which the Germans do not have at their disposal to deal with the al­together negative meanings of Germanness. In one classroom discussion one Kurdish girl explicitly described this as an advantage: "Since we, the foreign­ers, also know another mentality, another culture, we can decide which one is better or appeals to us more. As a result, there is always this Ionging for the culture that one likes best. I think Germans do not have this choice."

One of her classmates, a girl from a migrant family as well, commented on the same issue: "Sometimes one feels, like, Where do I belong ultimately? Should we have to found a new state for all who are 'half German,' or what?!"

This was not the only positioning strategy; partial identification with vari­ous other factors was another solution. Among such factors were the identifi­cation with the neighbourhood they lived in, with certain groups like the "good" anti-fascist, pro-immigrant Germans, with the old West before Ger­man unification; and with the economic success of West Germany, to name just a few. 34

The everyday reality of the children with migration backgrounds was ob­viously far more complex than what the concept of clearly delimited cultures was able to convey, in spite of the fact that everybody made use of it. The "foreign" pupils had leamed to conceive of themselves as being the others in Germany, while at the same time being insiders in everyday sociallife and, what is more, insiders on the level of the conceptual and argumentative "tool kit" (Swidler 1986), they used in making themselves understood. The ways in which the adolescents made sense of the world, voiced their arguments and handled the notions of cultural difference reflected the discursive assimilation

33 Legal amendments regarding nationality only took effect in the year 2000 and it will take time before they are integrated in the public self-image. With the new laws, a civic understanding replaced the ethno-national tradition that bolstered the popular understanding of Germanness as an equation of demos and ethnos "with higher evaluation of the ethnos" (Hoffmann 1996: 252). Before the amendment, naturalization of immigrants was exceptional unless they could dernarrstrate ethnic German ancestry. The current conditions are explained under www.einbuergerung.de.

34 For more examples see Mannitz 2004. In her study on the ways in which young migrants handle the particular burden of German history, Viola Georgi (2003) has likewise documented the difficulties inherent in the latent German integration demands.

40

COMING OF AGE AS "THE THIRD GENERATION"

process they had undergone growing up in Berlin. They were able to deploy available discourses on and about themselves, both conforming to and sub­verting the existing narratives. Their difficulty was thus not in handling the multi-level reality of their lives, but in coping with the fact that their creative conflation, which went beyond the conventionally imagined communities of national societies, found no apt recognition, neither from their families nor from their German surroundings; at home, as much as in school, they were expected to show sentiments of unambiguous identification and commitment. Yet even though nationality was in this way associated with culture, emo­tional ties and collective identity on all sides of the hegemonic categorization, this did not quite match the mixed experience of distance and simultaneaus belanging of many adolescents. Their way out of this situation was the "for­eigner" identity that makes use of the existing terminology but equips it with new meanings of transnational experiences.

Owing to the then rather restrictive German nationality legislation, most of the "foreign" pupils were in fact foreign nationals at the time of my fieldwork. Their own classifications, although citing the familiar reifications of alterity, were, however, fluid enough to transcend the rigid container model of na­tional groups and "their" cultures, which still occupies the dominant imagefies despite the decline of explicit nationalism. The following quote is a typical il­lustration of this conflation. lt was made by one of the young women I con­tinued to meet for interviews after she had left school. Her family had emi­grated from Sri Lanka in the 1980s and she had come to Berlin at primary school age. When reflecting upon her coming of age in Berlin, her argument presupposes a classical model of multi-cultural diversity with distinct cultural communities, yet the underlying notion of othemess is reassessed positively as meaning a collective resource in terms of enrichment that entails special opportunities in learning tolerance: "We had the advantage of enrichment through all the cultures. I have got to know so many cultures in school, [ ... ] and therefore I will never be able to claim that I have something against somebody from this orthat culture. After all, I got to know these people; they had the same problems I had, and we could talk to each other about that!"

From this point ofview, the immigrants appear as indispensable agents of social change because they embody plurality in society. This young wo man was not the only one to discover such a positive side in the ascription of othemess. In search of possible ways out of the nationally codified dilemma of conceptual exclusion, the "foreign" youth made a virtue out of the attribute of being others with different cultures. lt was thus the very diversity in a "multi-cultural" school setting as the emic vocabulary labelled it- which their German teachers regarded as a major source of distress and problems - that had made these pupils accept the relative meaning of difference to such an ex­tent that they could reassess the collective value of heterogeneity and con­clude, in the words of a teenage girl from a Greek family, that "every person is different. That has nothing to do with nationalities."

41

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Conclusion

Although cross-border relations mark the contemporary world to an unprece­dented degree and may in the long mn further undermine the nation concept, the boundaries of nationally defined societies, cultures, and citizenship mod­els are still powerful categories in terms of perceptions, recognition and ac­cess to privileges. West Germany has always been a country of immigration, but the presence of immigrants has largely remained a white space in the col­lective imagination. Not even the large scale de facto consolidation of the former "guestworker" immigration had led to any Straightforward policy of formal inclusion in Germany till the end of the 1990s. Until a Social Democ­rat-Green coalition supplanted the conservative coalition in 1998, much ofthe normative political discourse depicted labour migrants in Germany as for­eigners destined to retum to their home countries rather than as immigrants expecting to somehow become part of the permanent denizenry. Owing to this long-standing policy of denial, the conceptualization of the immigrants re­cmited in the heyday of the booming economy developed at a different pace than that of much of the societal inclusion process, which Germans and for­eign residents were experiencing together in West Germany. Yet even this situation was left surprisingly uncontested for most of the past forty years. Looking back, it seems as if both indigenous Germans and immigrants pre­ferred to practice a "muddling through" (Lindblom 1959; Geertz 1973) in­stead oftaking positive action and risking public strife.

However, the 1990s brought several catalytic moments that drew attention to the question of how cohabitation could be improved. Above all, the Ger­man unification put issues of national identity onto the agenda, triggering dis­cussions on internal cohesion in German society, on membership, belonging, and entitlements within the polity and on the place of unified Germany in the project of an increasingly integrating Europe. In the wake of these debates, the post-war trend towards the denationalization of German self-definitions was reconfirmed, its most tangible expression being the amendment of the nation­ality laws in the year 2000. Debates on how to manage and organise immigra­tion have nevertheless remained a site of ideological battles where fears of different cultures and traditions that immigrants might bring with them have repeatedly resurfaced along with fears of the economic charge that a decided integration policy would imply. Compared to neighbouring immigration coun­tries, the German public appears to be not only little experienced in facing the challenges of diversity, it also seems little confident in its own integrative po­tential.

The characteristic uneasiness which Germans display vis-a-vis immigrant others takes the shape of a culturalist discourse. This discourse is negatively biased and it poses particular constraints on the project of integration by way of the civic socialization in school, which is post-national in theory but con­tinues to reflect etlmo-national boundaries in the face of a "multicultural" re­ality. In fact, coping with immigration and furthering ideas of post-national-

42

COMING OF AGE AS "THE THIRD GENERATION"

ism do not appear as two sides to the same coin but as separate projects in the German setting. Despite the fact that Germanness has lost credit with the ex­perience of dreadful nationalism, cultural heterogeneity is hardly deemed a positive alternative vision, neither in public discourse on the whole nor in the topical discussions concerning the presence of immigrant children in schools. Owing to the difficulties in promoting Germanness and furthermore enhanced by the absence of a clear policy in favour of immigration, the stmggle in rec­onciling the ambitions in favour of post-nationalism with the desire of encul­turating newcomers within the bounds of the national society may be more complicated here than in other European countries.

While the European nation-states continue moving towards some form of transnational commonality (and by doing so may in future shift the imagined boundaries to fence Europe off), national concepts of sameness still matter in the articulation of internal collectivity. Even though the symbolic boundaries of national communities have been recast by the project of Europeanization, the nation-states have not become altogether insignificant. Shifts towards uni­versalistic learning contents and participation-oriented methods have gained importance, but each nation follows its own distinctive path of fitting its self­definition into the European framework. Consequently, the layers of discourse regarding nationality, social identities and viable options for collective as well as individual positioning have both multiplied and become more contested. Normative orientations toward desirable modes and balances of social, na­tional, and international integration compete with and partially they also con­tradict one another. This is not restricted to the tense moments between the national and the transnationallayers of citizenship in the contemporary Euro­pean Union but likewise appears to affect the terms of recognition within na­tional societies.

The complexity of these competing projects no doubt influences the pro­cesses of socialization of both children with and without immigrant back­grounds. The young people whose practices I studied in Berlin constmcted their identifications using strategic elements from many topical areas, from the debates over East and West Germany and the issue of internal unity to the distinctions between Europe and the Orient, Christianity and Islam, urban Berlin and rural Turkey and so forth. Yet their self-positioning was not ex­pressed through taking offensive positions in favour of one particular group allocation. Instead, the young "foreigners" defined themselves through vari­ous forms of "othering" (Abu-Lughod 1991) - fencing oneself off, stressing cultural but also individual differences which is not part of the image of clearly bounded groups. In the desire to define their place within German so­ciety they went beyond existing social boundaries and ultimately confirmed their identification with the more fluid and intersecting categorization of the "foreigners" than with either of the conventional nation-state informed con­cepts. By deploying this identity, one escapes the supposedly self-evident re­course to nationally defined groups or cultures and opts directly into the inter­secting cleavages. As a mode of identification, this strategy refuses to meet

43

SABINE MANNITZ

the expectation that immigrants would have to acquire national identity first in order to qualify as members of a post-national community thereafter. Nearly all students whom I interviewed declared themselves tobe both German and "foreign" to some degree, thus both subverting the existing classifications while simultaneously making use of them. The "third generation" of immi­grants thus appeared as embedded agents of a much larger shift towards the transnationalization of identities and Iifestyles than is foreseen in education programmes focused upon the constmction of a post-national sense of citizen­ship.

According to the young people' s accounts, their mixed attitude was not particularly welcome by their parents, many of whom felt the need to preserve some cultural distinctiveness. But it was no less problematic for many Ger­man teachers who felt responsible for promoting the values and standards of liberal democracy in Germany and had difficulties with their pupils' concept of maintaining their ties with the other home culture at the same time. For both teachers and parents, the notion of a genuine emotional - albeit situ­ational - identification with selected aspects of both groups was beyond imagination. lt questioned the certainties they had grown up with themselves. Identification with the national collectivity was traditionally supposed to link the political system of the state with its people as loyal custodians and sover­eign of "their" nation-states. Blurring national identities, of course, challenges this basic premise; yet it also entails opportunities to overcome various forms of polarization resulting from the categorical concept of different nationalities with distinct cultures co-existing, at best, side by side.

The way in which the adolescents included in this research came to terms with the competing assessments and discourses deserves acknowledgement as a form of self-empowered agency. Creating a transnational space for either imagining or escaping collectivity is an important first step toward developing new codes of coexistence. Of course, while pacifying animosities based on national differences within the "foreigner" community, the core identification with attributed othemess does little to erase the persistent conceptual divide between indigenous Germans and the immigrant population. Ultimately, many of those who see themselves - in cultural terms - as foreigners in Germany are also foreigners in the formal judicial sense, which still qualifies the spec­trum of possible claims and political rights. As long as the German majority does not make comparable efforts to transcend the conceptuallimitations un­derlying this very imbalance in hegemonic discourse and societal practice, the offspring of the immigrant population will be left alone with their stock of knowledge. To put it the other way round, when continuing to exclude certain migrant citizens from being part of integrating Europe, and hence from equal recognition and entitlements in the polity, the indigenous majorities do not only extrapolate othemess over generations but likewise spoil chances of liv­ing with and possibly overcoming differences. After all, the fact that people develop their sense of belanging in the social routines of daily life means that

44

COMING OF AGE AS "THE THIRD GENERATION"

the role of state institutions like schools is limited anyway to promoting a normative frame for personal (inter)agency.

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Al-Azmeh, Aziz 1993: Islamsand Modemities. London: Verso. Anderson, Benedict 1991: Imagined Communities: Rejlections on the Origin and

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WHEN GERMAN CHILDREN COME "HOME."

EXPERIENCES OF (RE- )MIGRATION TO GERMANY­AND SOME REMARKS ABOUT THE "TCK"-ISSUE

Jacqueline Knörr

Foreword: On proceeding from experience to agency without knowing it (right away)

I was not sure whether to write this paper. lt is based on randomly collected material I have gathered during the past 12 years while concentrating on other issues. lt also draws a link to my M.A. thesis, which was published 15 years ago. 1 lt is based on material I gathered in personal encounters and conversa­tions, on notes, which I penned down- piling them in a tray labelled "Mise." - and on recollections of conversations stored only in my memory.

In my M.A. thesis I dealt with the upbringing of mainly German and Swiss children and youths in Ghana and with the experiences they made upon their "retum" to Germany and Switzerland. I spent many years of my childhood in Ghana myself and the description and analysis of my own experience is part of my M.A. thesis. After that, I decided not to ever include any ofthat "per­sonal stuff' in academic writing again. Not because this bad been an awkward experience (although it was, to some extent), but somehow, I felt, tbat now that I bad restored and analyzed my own past and that of my (re-)migrant peers anthropologically, I could proceed to becoming a "real," a more "pro­fessional" anthropologist and - as a such- could do what "real" and "profes­sional" anthropologists should do, namely study and explore the "real" others' existence. I knew about the dialectics of "self' and "other" then, and in an­thropological endeavours and writing, it seemed, the "self' - situated in a rela­tivistic frame of mind- should serve the better understanding of the "other." Apart from tbat, whenever I bad told people I studied anthropology and bad lived in Ghana for many years as a child and young girl, I was greeted with a reaction of something like "Ob, that's why you study anthropology." I was sick of it.

For the past 15 years- since finishing my M.A. thesis- I have primarily been studying identity matters related to processes of creolization, migration, poli-

Knörr 1990. Cf. Lenzirr (2000), who studied the social and historical background and context of the Swiss community in Ghana. His study includes an evaluation and analysis of some ofthe parts ofKnörr's study.

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ticization, and interethnic contact. The people I study mostly live in towns, they are settlers, migrants, members of creole societies and diaspora groups. They are culturally heterogeneous, live in multiethnic environments and are involved in interethnic relations. They live in West Africa (in Sierra Leone and other countfies ofthe Upper Guinea Coast) andin Indonesia (Java).

Several years ago, I was invited by the late Professor Albert Wirz to pre­sent a paper at the Institute for African Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin. lt was about Freetown, about my Ph.D. thesis, which had then just been published. 2 In the discussion that followed, someone asked me why I had chosen this topic after having written an M.A. thesis about German and Swiss children in Ghana. I said something about new theoretical interests, open re­search questions and that anthropology needed to deal with contemporary is­sues and the like, and that all this had nothing to do with my M.A. thesis. Pro­fessor Wirtz frowned, and asked me, what had gotten me interested in that part of the world, in creole societies, and processes of creolization. (He had been quite positive about my M.A. thesis and I had been quite flattered when he considered it a good example of how personal experiences could be ana­lyzed for the development of anthropological theory. He was not so impressed now, obviously.) I shrugged my shoulders and said something like: "Well, of course, originally there are always personal reasons for choosing specific themes and approaches as well as research regions, but..." He then made me summarize (almost) all ofthem. I ended up with the impression I was studying creole societies because I was somehow a creole myself Now, I do not think I am, but I will never claim again that my interests in specific matters and re­gions are not (still) also related to my childhood and youth experience.

By "othering" myself in the process of writing my M.A. thesis - in putting my own childhood and youth experience within a comparative framework of analysis - I had put myself in a position that enabled me to examine and ana­lyze anthropologically a topic that included my personal experience. By ex­amining and analyzing a topic that included my personal experience, the proc­ess of "othering" the latter was enhanced and put in (a comparative) perspec­tive. Whereas this did not free me of my childhood and youth - you are never free ofthat anyway - and whereas I had not proceeded from being a "not so real" to being a "real" anthropologist - I had proceeded from experience to agency by choosing to deal with my own childhood and youth experiences and with those of others "like myself' by means of anthropological research and writing - without being fully aware of it. So I might just as well write an­other contribution about something that is simply more directly related to per­sonal experience than most other topics I deal with.

2 Knörr 1995.

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WHEN GERMAN CHILDREN COME "HOME"

Who and what this paper is (not) about

In this paper I will highlight some aspects concerning the experiences of Ger­man children and youths coming to live in Germany after having spent many years or almost their whole lives in Africa. I will deal with their reception by their new social environment in Germany and with their perception of and re­action to it. I will focus on white children because their experience is a special case that differs considerably from that of children with a mixed African­German background.

I deal with an issue that is hardly ever mentioned in migration studies, namely children of a Western- in my case German- background, who are brought up in a non-Westem environment before "returning" to a "home," which in many cases has never been or is no Ionger home to them. These chil­dren are usually not considered (re-)migrants by their German teachers, peers, and relatives. 3 They are considered "homecomers"- and they are expected to behave accordingly. 4 I will come back to that.

There are several publications on what has for some time now been la­belled "TCK" and "ATCK" - "Third Culture Kids" and "Adult Third Culture Kids." lt was John and Ruth Useem who coined the term in the 1950s when they studied Americans living and working in India. 5 They defined the home culture of the parents as the first culture and the host culture where the expa­triate family lived as the second culture. The "Third Culture" to them was the culture of the expatriate community, which they understood as a "culture be­tween cultures" integrating cultural features of home and host societies. More recently the definitionwas broadened to include all children who move into another society with their parents. With regard to cultural identity, a TCK is defined as a person "who has spent a significant part of bis or her develop­mental years outside the parents' culture. The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership of any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK's life experience, the sense of belanging is in relationship to others of similar background."6

3 Some of the more recent works on retuming migration include: Allen 1994; Arowolo 2000; Firat 1991; Harnmond 2004; Martin 2005; Paraschon 2001; Wolbert 1995. There arealso studies on (and accounts of) Namibian children and youths who were brought up in the German Democratic Republic and retumed to Namibia later on. They give an impression of childhood and youth re-migration "the other way round" - from Germany to Africa; see Engambe 2004; Kenna 1999.

4 Wolbert (1995) describes similar experiences of Turkish children and youths re­migrating to Turkey after having sperrt many years in Germany. Cf. Stenzel, Hornfeld & Fenner 1989.

5 Useem & Useem 1955; 1993. 6 Pollock & van Reken 2004: 19. The authors adopt this definition from "The

TCK Profile" seminar material, Interaction, Inc., 1989: 1. See also: http://www. tckworld.com/tckdefine.html. This website is a forum for TCKs.

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This broadening of the term - while being inclusive, not making a differ­ence between a Sierra Leonean refugee in the United States and an American son of an ambassador somewhere in Africa- is in danger of covering up some of the specific concepts and ideologies connected to the TCK approach. lt stressesthat the term TCK is not restricted to Western children- particularly not to Western children brought up in the so-called Third World - but it is nevertheless mostly connected to the latter and not to immigrant children in the USA or Germany. Most of the literatme dealing with the topic- scientifi­cally and/or (auto)biographically- is written by Western (mostly American) authors who deal with experiences of Western children living abroad and with the challenges they meet upon repatriation. Some of their most common ex­periences and emotional problems have been described and analyzed in Pol­lock's and van Reken's book on "Third Culture Kids," which also deals mainly with Western expatriate children. 7 Whereas it is stressed in current writing that a Turkish child growing up in Germany is a TCK as well, the simple fact that authors feel they need to point this out shows that a distinction is usually made, even if it is made implicitly. Turkish- and other- immigrant children are generally not perceived or treated as TCKs in academic research and writing. They are usually not studied with regard to the "Third Culture" they are producing, but with regard to their being "caught between different cultures," their integration problems, problems in learning the host country' s langnage or with regard to the problems they are causing for their host society. To put it very simply, whereas the upper dass ofyoung, mostly Western mi­grants to- mainly- Third World countries are likely tobe considered "Third Culture Kids," producing creatively a culture for themselves, the lower classes ofyoung migrants- those from Third World or poorer countries migrating or fleeing to mostly Western countfies- are likely tobe considered immigrants with a cultural background, which does not fit their new environment and thus produce problems for themselves and their host society. There is an implicit­and qualifying - distinction made between TCKs on the one hand and other young (im)migrants on the other. With regard to the former, (appropriate) cul­tural creativity is emphasized; with regard to the latter (inappropriate) cultural conservatism. Academic approaches thereby largely and mostly implicitly re­flect the - usually not so implicit - qualifying distinctions made in society at large.

With regard to the production of "Third Culture," however, these distinc­tions seem inadequate in real sociallife. Most of those, who are "classical" TCKs- Western expatriate children and youths, for whom the term TCK was invented in the first place - often do not produce much of a culture of their own located somewhere "in between" home and host society. 8 Many ofthem,

7 Pollock & van Reken 2004 (English edition); Pollack, van Reken & Pflüger 2003 (German edition). Other contribution on this group of migrants include: Roth 2001; Smith 1996; Storti 2001.

8 There are, of course, also many children who mix with the local population, es­pecially children of missionaries and of parents who work in development pro-

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I claim, are brought up largely within the boundaries of an expatriate culture, which is often socially and culturally isolated from its local environment, and which does not integrate much or any of the local culture. On the contrary, more often than not, expatriate communities - especially the W estem ones -screen themselves off from local influences. Thus, in reallife, a German child in Africa may survive quite well within the boundaries of a German or West­ern expatriate world, whereas a Turkish child in Germany is forced to deal with both its parents' Turkish and its host country's German culture in order to manage life in Germany. The definition of the TCK' s "Third Culture" as a blend of one's parents' home and of one's host country's culture therefore does not apply to many contemporary expatriate children living in expatriate environments. Their social lives and cultural worlds, especially if located in places whose culture is experienced as very different from one's own, are rarely made up of such home-and-host composites. Many children of expatri­ates do not even experience much local culture because they largely share their parents' sociallives and cultural worlds. These are, in many cases, expa­triate forms of one's own home culture that have been adapted to the local so­cial, cultural, and physical environment- a process, which under the condition of temporary - and sometimes even long term - stays abroad, rarely includes much incorporation ofthe culture prevalent in one's host culture, even less so, when the latter is not just experienced merely as different but as inferior as well. Thus, in many cases, expatriate worlds are not worlds that integrate fmitfully and creatively one's own and one's host culture; they remain apart from the latter while being far away from the former. The "Third Culture" that such TCKs produce - at least while abroad - is therefore in many cases noth­ing more than a children's and youths' version ofthe adults' (parents') expa­triate culture containing little local input.

However, expatriate cultures may very well be unique for different rea­sons, even ifthey do not involve much mixing with the local culture. An expa­triate culture may be unique in its ways of avoiding contact with the host country' s culture or in its ways of avoiding the incorporation of the latter. lt may be unique in its finding ways to maintain as much of one' s own culture of origin while living abroad. lt may be unique in its preservation of a colonial Iifestyle unthinkable back home. lt may indeed be unique in interconnecting and mixing different expatriate communities' cultures and ways of life, thereby producing a "Third Culture," but not one which involves home and host culture; it is this former sort of mixing which may often be confused with a mixing of the latter sort.

Despite these observations - and reservations with regard to the definition of "Third Culture" in the context of expatriate childrens' lives- I do believe and know from my own experience that expatriate culture, expatriates' social lives and Iifestyles may indeed be very different from those of their compatri-

jects in locations far away from where the majority of contemporary expatriates live.

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ots "back home." These expatriate worlds in many cases are the only ones they are familiar with, the only ones they consider home. Children of expatri­ates, even if they have not experienced much of the local culture of their host country, have a different cultural and social identity than those who they will meet upon repatriation in their parents' home countries, which in many cases is not home to them.

Whereas I agree that the term "Third Culture Kids" is not to be reserved for Western expatriates alone, I think one should not simply hide the, mostly implicit, ideologies of difference that often occur in its usage. Many children for whom the term "Third Culture Kids" was originally coined- children who are brought up in expatriate communities - are often not TCKs in the sense of creating an identity based on both home and host culture, 9 whereas others, who are still only rarely considered TCKs - like Turkish children in Germany and Sierra Leonean refugee children in the United States- usually are. "Third Cultures" may be different in content and stmcture and they may or may not be produced by (re-)migrant children of all sorts. Such differences, however, should not be ignored; neither should the differences in the experiences and treatment of (re-)migrant or repatriating children depending on social status and origin, differences, which affect the process of integration as well as the production of "Third Culture."

There are certainly similarities among TCKs all over the world - probably as a result of the similarities and interconnectedness of (many) expatriate com­munities and of sharing the experience of being brought up "elsewhere." But there are also differences between expatriate communities as such and their treatment of their child members in particular as well as differences between different "home" countfies with regard to their treatment of repatriating chil­dren and youths.

I will focus on the experiences and agencies of the German species in this paper, on children and youths who have spent large parts of their lives in Af­rica before (re-)migrating to Germany.

Although Germany as an export country also "exports" a lot of manpower and "experts" to foreign countries, who become expatriates abroad and repa­triates upon their retum, and despite the fact that many German children are therefore brought up elsewhere before (re-)migrating to Germany, there is hardly any research on that topic and hardly any awareness of this phenome­non, neither in public nor in academia.

Who are the people whose information this papers is based on? They are a rather mixed crowd. Since publishing my M.A. thesis I on occasion met some of the people I had interviewed back in the late 1980s in the frame­work of my fieldwork. W e talked about their experiences since we met last,

9 They might be "Today's Colorrial Kids" - which is a rather unique way of life and experience as well.

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WHEN GERMAN CHILDREN COME "HOME"

about changes that had occurred in their lives and attitudes. Some of the peo­ple I interviewed in Ghana and Germany as children and youths in the late 1980s were adults when we met and talked again. Others, who I interviewed about their (past) experience of having been brought up in Ghana and integrat­ing in Germany were already young adults then and somewhat less young adults when we encountered each other later on.

Apart from those I already knew, I met others who had come from differ­ent African countries to live in Germany at different times in the past. There were children, youths, and adults among them.

Thus, the time span the experience of (re-)migration in childhood and youth relates to is around 30 years (1973-2003), the people were between seven and 50 years at the time of the interviews/conversations. They had ex­perienced (re-)migration between a few months and 30 years ago. Thus, it is "new" and "old" experiences that I am dealing with. With regard to issues that are strongly influenced by the receiving social environment in Germany, the analysis will be able to show some of the changes that have occurred in Ger­many during the past 30 years - and point out, where continuities seem to dominate in the reception of (re-)migrant German children and youths. In some of the cases I can also point out some of the developments related to growing up and getting older.

The material gathered will be presented and analyzed in the form of "high­lights." Thesehighlightsare in no way intended to give a complete picture en­compassing all that can be experienced in the process of (re-)integration in Germany. They are meant to shed light on some ofthe experiences shared by many and on some of the major social dynamics involved in the process of (re-)integration in Germany andin the interaction of experience and agency.

Where is home and why?

As mentioned above, German children moving to Germany after having spent many years in Africa are usually not considered (re-)migrants but homecom­ers. Thus, their farnilies, peers, and teachers do not expect them to have a lot of problems adjusting to their German environment. They are considered to be returning to their "real" home andin many cases they are supposed to feel to be "home at last." Frank,10 who is 44 today and retumed to Germany 25 years ago, said: "The first day I attended school in Germany, my teacher asked me 'how does it feel tobe back home after so many years in Africa?' But I did not really understand. I felt like being in a strange country and I felt that I had left my home behind."

10 For the sake of confidentiality all names have been changed and specific African countries mentioned in the conversations/interviews have been "translated" to "Africa."

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To feel at home is not something that comes with being where one's ethnic or national roots are according to one's parents' descent. lt is something that comes with personal and emotional attachment. German "homecomers" have often had little opportunity to develop such an attachment before they are "re­patriated" into what in many cases is only their parents', but not their own home country. Instead, they leave what they consider home behind. They leave behind what they feel attached to - their friends, their school, the place they used to live - and in many cases their parents, brothers, sisters, cats, and dogs. Their social environment changes as well as their way of life - and at the same time they are expected to feel at home "at last." Christina, 28 in 1995, after 12 years ofliving in Germany, said:

When I came to Germany to live with my uncle and aunt, it was okay for them that I missed my parents and my sister. They could understand that. But they didn't under­stand that I missed Africa. They thought I should be glad to be back in the civilized world or something like that. But I didn't like this kind of civilization. I wanted my home back where I felt free to do the things I liked.

In many cases children "coming home" only know Germany from summer vacations. Germany thus is a more or less strange place and not home at all. Judy (12) who had just retumed to Germany at the time of our conversation felt that "[ ... ] everything is different here and I feel homesick a lot. I miss my friends and my school and our garden. And I hate this weather ... it' s all so grey and depressing here." Conny, who is now 44, showed me an entry in her diary at the age of 15, several months after she had come to live with relatives in Germany. All across two pages, written in red capitalletters, it said: "I want to go home!!! I want to go home!!! That's all I want, I just want to go home!! !" I asked her what it was that she had missed so much then and whether it was mainly her family, who had stayed behind. She replied: "I missed my parents, too, but most of all I missed ... I don't know, I missed my home. Everything. I felt lost in Germany. Like a stranger. And there was no­body to relate to, who shared my experience, my attachment to Africa. No­body."

This seems to be the worse part in many cases. Whereas "real" migrants in most cases have other "real" migrants with whom they can share their experi­ence, who know the place back home and who go through similar experiences and feelings in their host country, German children and youths- especially 30 years ago - hardly met anyone like that. There were no other children and young people around at one's school who knew what they were talking about when talking about "home." Germans who grew up in Africa arestill few and it is unlikely they will meet at the same school somewhere in Germany. Raul, who was 12 when I talked to him in 1996, after he had been living in a small Bavarian village for a year, said: "The other children think it is interesting to have someone like me around, someone from Africa. But of course they asked all sorts of silly questions like 'Are they really all black there?' or 'Did you live in a little straw hut?', 'Did you eat snakes?' Lots of things like that. When

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I told them we lived in a big house, they could hardly believe it. I thought they were stupid."

Thus, children and especially youths - who often come to Germany as teenagers, at an age which is problematic anyway - tend to feel lonely and alone in Germany. They are expected to feel at home - at least to find it easy to integrate and adapt. They look the same as everyone else, they speak the same language, but they often have no one who shares their experience, no one who could make them feel at home "at home."

Of course there are other - and opposite - cases as well. Especially chil­dren who came to Africa at a later stage in their childhood and only stayed there for a short period of time, may feel the other way round - to them Africa sometimes remained the strange place, the place they did not feel at home. These children are, in fact, the real re-migrants. They are coming back home, feeling relieved - like Giselher, who was 11 when his family took him along to Africa and 13 when they all retumed to Germany: "Gosh, I was so happy to be back here," he told me, "I hated it there. And I do not think, I will ever want to retum."

lt largely depends on the social environment, whether children and youths manage to feel at least a little bit at home upon their "retum" to Germany. lt is usually easier for those who come to Germany with their parents- and all the more so for those who have siblings to share their experiences with. lt seems hardest - in most cases - for those coming back on their own, for those who move to small towns, who live in conservative settings where people are less farniliar with dealing with difference and with people who have not shared their social and cultural world.

Some children, especially those whose farnilies stay behind in Africa, of­ten experience Africa as their first and "real" home, while Germany may be­come something like a second home, the place, where they go to school. After several years - with more and closer contacts in Germany, and with time -this might change and Germany might very well become their first, Africa their second home.

Many children leave Africa once and for all when their parents decide to leave and take their children along. While leaving Africa might also cause adults and parents some heartache after living there for many years, the situa­tion for children is different, especially for those who have lived there for large parts or all of their lives. Whether their life happened to be integrated into the local context or isolated from it - it is often the only life they know and which they are familiar with. Doris, 13, who came to Germany to live with her grandmother six months ago, told me: "lt is not because I think Ger­many is terrible. But everything is different here. lt doesn't fit me. I'm differ­ent. lt's because I don't feel I belong here. I belong to Africa. That's where my heart is, and home is where the heart is, they say. My heart longs for Af­rica all the time, and it hurts a lot." Doris got so homesick some months later, that, apart from the emotional "heartache" she developed physical disorders to

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a point where she was virtually unable to move because of "pain in my heart" atthe age of 13.

On being a white child in Africa and how this affects re-migration

Although I will be concentrating on the experience of re-migration and (re-) integration in Germany there are some particularities concerning the sociallife of German (and other Western) expatriates in Africa that have a major impact on the process of integration in Germany and need to be addressed to under­stand what will follow.

Children and youths coming to Germany from Africa have experienced sociallives and forms of sociability that differ from those in Germany. This is true especially for those who lived in Africa some 20 or more years ago. The "intra-ethnic" cohesion among Germans (and other groups of expatriates) was rather close then since there were not many of them and they tended to stay for Ionger periods of time than today. 11 In many African countfies there was no television, much less video available, so people socialized by visiting each other in their leisure time, by spending weekends together etc. There was no intemet in those days either, which would allow closer contact with "back home."12 Apart from that, most German expatriates had little close personal contacts to Africans. But even today, whites largely stay among themselves with a few exceptions, consisting mainly of African spouses. Thus, most German children and youths in Africa experience a pronounced gap between blacks and whites, between the local population and themselves, that is.

Being white in Sub-Saharan Africa usually goes along with being part of the upper class in economic terms. Whereas there might be considerable varia­tion in the income structure of whites in Africa, compared to the overwhelm­ing part of the local population, most of them were and are rich. As well, be­ing white - from the point of view of most whites, but many Africans as well - is associated with being more advanced, civilized, and educated than the lo­cal African population.

Despite intemal hierarchies even within small expatriate communities, its members often cannot afford to cultivate too much of an intemal bias with re­gard to class and income since they are too few. Thus, "othemess" is attrib-

11 This is true for all Sub-Saharan countfies where my informants lived. Things are different in South Africa and Namibia and- to some extent- Zimbabwe, but none of my informants had lived there.

12 Many Germans who lived in Africa then and still live there today consider the introduction of videos and the intemet the worst that cou1d happen to the expatri­ate community because socia1 life suffered immense1y because "newcomers don't integrate [into the 1oca1 expatriate community] but just sit at home and watch a video or sit in front of their computer to chat with their fami1y or friends in Germany through the intemet."

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uted first and foremost to the local Africans with varying degrees of "other­ness" in between them and one's own group- which correlate with shades of colours as well as with social and cultural differences. The message the major­ity of white children growing up in "black" Africa get is that being white goes along with being rich and superior. While blacks may also (be )come rich and advance economically for different reasons, being rich appears to be an innate and natural feature of being white, a feature of social dass, which in most cases goes along with a feeling of cultural superiority. Whereas white parents in most cases have experienced that being white does not have such implica­tions everywhere, many white children lack this experience altogether- and many of their parents prefer forgetting it while in Africa.

Coming to Germany, being white suddenly does not mean anything at all. Additionally, most children and youths experience a social decline when com­ing to Germany - not because their parents suddenly become poor but because they suddenly shift from being members of a small upper dass in Africa to be­ing members of a large middle dass in Germany. To some children and youths this is a rather traumatic experience, to others it is at least surprising. Janet, aged 24 now, and Max, 25, told me about the experiences they had after their arrival in Germany.

I once saw a beggar in the street. A young African man who was just walking by stopped to put some money into the old man's hat, which was lying in front ofhim. I could not believe my eyes. A black man giving money to a white beggar! I felt this could not be true (Janet, 13 then). 13

When I came to Germany nine years ago, I had an African boy in my class. He was from Guinea, really black. I went to a school in Africa where they were mostly whites, except some children with African mothers and then there were some Afri­cans, too, but we didn't have much contact. The Africans I had contacts with most were servants. Now, this boy was a really bright student and he was also very nice. That really made me think. In a way I was surprised. W e became good friends after a while. Now, don't you think it's funny that the firsttime I made friends with an African was after I had come to Germany? After having lived in Africa most of my childhood? (Max, 16 then).

When I myself went to Abidjan from Accra as a young girl, we went to a res­taurant, where white waiters were serving African customers. I was truly puz­zled since I had never seen anything like that before.

For children and youths who are brought up in families with pronounced racist attitudes and condescending ways of behaviour towards Africans, it of­ten seems quite natural to give orders to African "boys," nannies, drivers, gar­deners, and watchmen at an early stagein life. Upon their retum to Germany, they often experience that their behaviour toward "the locals" is perceived as

13 Many Africans coming to Germany have similar feelings and thoughts when see­ing beggars in Germany for the first time - and realizing that Africans are not always and everywhere poorer than Europeans.

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inadequate, to say the least. Jonathan, now 34, told me what happened to him shortly after he had come to Germany at the age of 16.

When I came to Germany, I was taking a ride on a moped which belonged to some­one I had met. I was used to driving a car before so I didn't think about it. I was stopped by the police. When the policeman asked me for my licence and said some­thing about legal consequences, I took out five Marks and handed the money to him casually, saying so mething like 'this should be enough, ey?' Of course, he did not take it and asked me, whether I also wanted to be fined for trying to bribe the police. I was puzzled and said something like: 'You don't want money, ey? The police in Africa are not as fussy." And he said: 'Y oung man, this is not Africa, this is Ger­many.'

lt is not smprising that children and youths behave in this way if that is what they have learned to be adequate behaviour. Of course, there are many expa­triate children who are brought up in less racist environments and whose par­ents do not act like colonialists. Children, whose parents do not cultivate racist attitudes, who socialize with Africans, who do not "protect" their children from local influence, may in fact experience Germans "at home" as racist and xenophobic. Lukas, 29, who was raised as a son of missionary parents, ex­plained: "I was always among both white and black children. This seemed normal to me. In Germany many ofmy new friends thought ofthis as strange. They hardly communicated with their Turkish peers at school, for instance, whereas for me, this was perfectly natural. In fact, I enjoyed their company more because at least they knew what it was like tobe different from the rest."

The experience of "being superior by nature" can also have negative ef­fects when children start attending school in Germany. First of all, it is usually difficult anyhow to change schools and it is more so when everything else changes as well. Secondly, in many cases the schools the children attended in Africa do not meet the standards of schools in Germany. Schools in Africa are often modelled on different educational systems than the German one (British or French in most cases). 14 Thirdly, for many children it is the firsttime they experience something like "serious competition" and serious stress. This may be the case simply because it is difficult to catch up, but also that many (for­mer) expatriate children are not used to having to do much for school, either because the standards were a lot lower and/or because "muddling through somehow" was common practice at the schools they attended. Tina, 12, who had attended school in Germany for only four months at the time of our con­versation three years ago, said: "Oh God, school is so much more difficult here. lt was so much easier before and you could talk to the teachers if you didn't understand something and then they would explain it to you again until you would understand and pass somehow. But here it's just take it or leave it, pass or fail, nobody cares."

14 German schools can only be attended where they exist, like in Nigeria, where the German community is quite large.

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In some cases, schools and classes attended by expatriates in Africa were small; students know each other well and spend their time at school as well as most of their leisure time together. Teachers were often part of the expatriate community and if it is a small one, letting a child fail was a much more per­sonal matter than in a setting where teachers are not parents' friends at the same time. The latter, of course, can also be the case in a small village in Germany. But the "way out" - for teachers, parents, and students - may have been even more limited in a small expatriate community. In many such com­munities, inter-personal relations were close and loyalty within them was ex­pected to be high. Thus, in many cases, competition is also limited because "they would never not let us pass in the end." I am not saying all expatriate children were - and even less are - situated in school environments of that sort. Neither am I saying that such environments are necessarily bad, but in Germany things are different.

As white expatriates in Africa, even children who perform weakly at school often do not experience this to be a threat to their future because of their "naturally" superior status as whites and as members of the upper class. Sarah, 24 at the time of the interview, told me about her attitude when she came to Germany eight years ago: "In Africa, I did not care so much about the marks I got. lt seemed to me that I would always be rich enough to live a com­fortable life. I was white after all. But then in Germany I realized that not per­forming well at school may lead to a life in misery. And after a while I started working harder in order to get better marks."

Being white is normal in Germany - and competition is stronger. Most children returning from Africa are no Ionger members of the upper class in Germany. For many, it is the firsttime they experience not being "naturally" superior to most others around them. And to many this experience is a highly fmstrating one. Kevin said, at the age of 17, after having come to Germany six months ago: "Everything is much smaller, our house, our garden, my room. And my freedom to move about." In fact, the potential mobility in Germany is usually larger, but would involve taking a bus. For children and youths who are used to being driven around or to drive themselves, this may very well feel like a Iimitation of their personal freedom. Kevin: "I could drive in Africa, why should I take a bus here." Hausehold chores, unheard ofbefore, may also lead to fmstration. Kevin: "We had a boy to do these things before, and here I am expected to make up my room myself I hate it, it's boring." Many chil­dren and youths who have been brought up "colonial style" think of the latter as the only style appropriate (to them). They feel de-privileged, punished, or humiliated by having to do such "boring" duties themselves.

Soon after Janet had come to Germany, she was invited to some of her classmates' homes. She experienced most of them as "poor, because they lived in flats. I knew that most people in Germany live in flats, but in a way I thought that most people in Germany are ... well, not as poor as most people in Africa were poor ... but a little bit poor." Most children know from vacations in Germany that housing conditions for most people are not as spacious as

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they are in Africa - it is just that they do not see themselves as or expect to be one of "most people" when coming to Germany. They see themselves and ex­pect to be superior to the majority of the "locals" - to those in Germany now as to those in Africa before.

On the other hand, there arealso many expatriate children who are highly flexible and adaptable - both in attitudes and behaviour- due to the many dif­ferent conditions of life they have already experienced at an early age. Like Laura, 13, who said, a few months after moving to Germany in 1997:

Well, I knew things were tobe changing again. We had always moved every two or three years, so I was used to moving and to things being different everywhere. In Af­rica white people were usually rich and we had a big house. In Brazil a lot of white people are poor and many are just so la la ... and we had a nice place, but not so big. In Germany now, we have a nice place too. But not like in Africa. I don't mind that. But the weather, I really hate the weather.

There are also many children who had lived in Germany long enough before moving to Africa to remember more clearly that being white does not auto­matically correlate with being rich and superior. They usually have a more re­alistic image of life in Germany and w hat they are returning to.

How to continue feeling naturally superior "at home" -"Expatriate Germans are superior to Germans here"

How do you manage to continue feeling superioras a white person when sud­denly everyone else is white too? One option is to turn to "culture" as a source of (superior) identification. You forget about being white and take on a differ­ent identity based on "being" or "having been an expatriate," or, more fash­ionably, on being a "Third Culture Kid" and -later on-an "Adult Third Cul­ture Kid."

Strategies as such, in many cases, remain the same in Germany as in Af­rica. In Africa it was "the Africans" - the locals that is - who were looked down upon, who were considered and treated as different and - more often than not - as inferior. In Germany it is the locals as well, who are looked down upon, and who are considered and treated as inferior. An adult (and par­ent) "retumee" told me that there is "an enormous difference between those Germans, who have never lived anywhere else in the world, and us. They may go somewhere on holiday but that's not the same. They don't know what life in Africa - or elsewhere - is really like. They just know their way of life in Germany. Not like us who have lived abroad, who have seen the world."

lt is often the parents who foster such attitudes in their children as well, especially when they try to comfort them when having problems integrating in Germany, when feeling lonely and rejected- at school and elsewhere. And parents often suffer as well when being "downgraded" to the middle class upon their return to Germany. Although many will have prospered economi-

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cally - having eamed well and saved while in Africa - fewer of them will manage to retain their membership in the upper dass upon retum. They often transform their superiority based on race and dass to a superiority based on having lived abroad, on having been an Auslandsdeutscher (literally: a Ger­man from abroad). Even on vacations in Germany, while stillliving in Africa, many such Auslandsdeutsche - both adults and children alike - brag about their servants, houses, positions etc. in Africa. They thereby also try to main­tain at least some sort of superiority to all those whites in Germany "who have never lived abroad." Despite the different environments, the cultivation of su­periority, in both cases, is based on "being different from"- and "being better than" - the local population.

Feeling different

The (re-)migrant children under study here look the same and (usually) speak the same langnage as their Counterparts in Germany. The repatriated children, however, are different because 1) they have no or only limited experience of life in Germany and 2) because they have lived in Africa for a long time and therefore have been exposed to sociallives and Iifestyles different from Ger­man ones in Germany. They have been influenced - to varying degrees - by African and/or by expatriate culture.

With regard to "sameness versus difference" most children and youths I have talked to experience themselves as being different from the children they encounter in Germany, all the more so, the greater the part of their childhood and youth spent in Africa.

For one, they often experience the lives of children in Germany - and of youths in particular- as "not as free as in Africa." They feel they had more liberties in Africa than in Germany - which in many cases they have indeed had due to their status and due to less rigid mles related to age. As well, weather can make a real difference in "feeling free" and less restricted in one's activities, especially to children and youths. One popular and common theme is the "party issue." Ask a 14-year old Germanboy or girl who has lived in Africa before about the things they miss most "about Africa" and a large percentage of them will tell you it is "the parties we had." lt seems that due to a somewhat restricted field of potential other activities - or to a lack of interestinsuch- partying is a majorsportat an early age among expatriate y­ouths. One such boy explained to me:

You know you don't have neighbours the way you do here [Germany]. Seeing your friends means driving there. And of course, our parents had to drive us- or our driv­ers- un1ess you were 16 and cou1d drive yourse1f. And there isn't much e1se to do at night, anyway. So usually we had a party every Friday. And, of course, our parents 1eft the house or stayed upstairs then. Now, here, I can't believe it. I mean, we are 14 - 14! - and parents tell their chi1dren they have to be home at 10 or 11. They actu­ally sit there with their chi1dren at the party - they hang around! There is no hiding.

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We used to have boyfriends and girlfriends and I tell you, we didn't just kiss! But here, I mean, at 14, they are like children! We were really different, much more ma­ture.

There are other differences as well. Whereas many children have been more or less isolated from their African environment in terms of social contacts, they have usually experienced a more intemationallife than in Germany. They often had friends from all over the world. Expatriate culture might be isolated from its local environment, but intemally it may be very varied with regard to nationalities, social and cultural backgrounds. In Germany, many children therefore find life rather "German." Uta, 15, said to me recently: "It's boring sometimes. Allthese Germans. In Africa I had friends from everywhere. From Italy, England, America ... but here, only Germans." And Frank, 13, com­plained:

In Africa my friends were more interesting because they came from all parts of the world. And we had more fun because everybody was more open-minded. And you know, my friends' fathers were diplomats and ... well, they had good professions, they came from good families. It's more mixed here when it comes to that. .. I mean, in my class there are children whose fathers are politicians and children whose fa­thers are just simple workers... it wasn't like that in Africa. And it was interna­tional. .. more international and ... well, more people with better professions.

Many children and youths experience themselves as different because they have mixed more with children from around the world and because they are used to a different group of people. Whereas they often only had little social contact with their local environment, they were often exposed to different life­styles of different (other) expatriate individuals and communities. In Ger­many, most children do not share that experience. Being exposed to different lifestyles in childhood- even ifthe local African lifestyle remains excluded­may very well result in being more open towards other cultures than one' s own - even if such experiences are made within the boundaries of expatriate communities. Many expatriates - children as well as adults - may not get to know much about Africa, they may not socialize much with Africans while living in Africa- but they may very well get to know Italians, French, British, Americans etc. Expatriate environments may be rather exclusively expatriate, but they may nevertheless be rather international. Many expatriates therefore live a very internationallife indeed and get to know a lot about all sorts of dif­ferent cultures existing outside of Africa.

There are also German children in Africa who live a more locally inte­grated life. They associate mainly with members of the local community, go to local schools etc. They will incorporate more African "ways," they will know a lot more about Africans and African life - but all this does not usually make them feel "more different" or "more disconcerted" in Germany than those children who have lived a less African lifestyle. It seems, living in an expatriate environment in Africa is experienced as being just as different from living in Germany as living in an African environment - not with regard to the

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"cultural stuff' but with regard to way of life, to the "feel" of life. Thus, "Germanizing" Germans in Africa might have a (more or less) German Christmas tree for Christmas, they might sing German Christmas songs and eat a goose. All this, nevertheless, feels completely different from celebrating Christmas in Germany. lt is differently different than the difference experi­enced whenjoining an African Christmas celebration, but it does not necessar­ily feel less different in retrospect. Petra told me some years ago about her first Christmas in Germany at the age of 14: "I know, we had a German Christmas tree and all that - and we more or less did the same things that we do here now, but it was still alldifferent there, it all feels completely different now. lt isjust not the same, no way." And a young woman told me about her family's experience in a rather remote African environment: "We used to celebrate Christmas with our African neighbours and friends. And with some of our German colleagues who livedjust a few miles away. We joined the Af­ricans in their celebration of Christmas. lt was all very different from the Ger­man way. And now that we are back in Germany, our own ways of celebrating Christmas feel quite strange." More "Africanized" Germans - children and adults alike - will relate their feeling and being different more to having been influenced by African ways, whereas more "expatriatized" Germans will re­late it more to having been influenced by expatriate ways.

Experiencing school: Why German teachers don't like German re-migrants (either)

Listening to experiences of migrant children in general, one thing seems to be quite clear- the majority of German teachers are ill-prepared to deal with cul­turally heterogeneaus groups of students. Many seem to experience other cul­tural backgrounds than their own first and foremost as problems and nui­sances, which need to be overcome. The backgrounds and motivations for their attitudes and approaches may very well differ - and are not my major concem here. 15 Those rooted in more conservative political thought often con­sider integration a success only if it results in a student feeling and acting like a real German. Anything that does not seem familiar - wearing a headscarf, speaking one's mother tongue, not eating pork, going to mosque, eating with sticks - makes them feel uncomfortable and is in many cases interpreted as a sign of unwillingness on the part of the migrant student to integrate properly. Germans tend to expect being disliked for being German and therefore tend to take migrants' desires and efforts to maintain (some of) their own culture as a sign of the latter' s rejection of German culture and German people - because,

15 When criticizing teachers, one is often referred to the difficult situation they work in. Much has been written dealing with teachers' difficult situation. I do not deny that it is indeed difficult, but I am dealing here not with teachers' but with students' problems.

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why would they want to maintain their own culture if they liked the German one? As well as that, a concept of identity that connects "culture" and "race" as closely astheGerman concept does, leaves little room for (intemal) variety based on social or cultural influence. In very simplified terms - such influence may make a difference, but it cannot change the major essence of being Ger­man.16 And, more importantly here, due to this interconnection of "culture" and "race" in German thought, it is also difficult to conceptualize "being German" as an identity that can be connected to "being something else" at the same time.

Those who have a more liberal or progressive outlook on the world - es­pecially (former) members of the '68-movement and those influenced by it­often have strong feelings about the ideals and ideologies that many of them seemingly fear will not survive them. There is a strong notion of being a very special generation among many of them- especially in Germany, where they cultivate a belief of being the ones who unmasked and exposed the Nazi­generation. But despite their proclaimed anti-authoritarianism and their criti­cism of German nationalism, many of them tend to have rather dogmatic views when it comes to accepting those who do not concur with their under­standing of the world, sometimes reacting in rather authoritarian ways in de­fence of their concepts of anti-authoritarianism. Mannitz describes in her con­tribution in this volume how this affects "the Orientals," but, as I will show, it affects (re-)migrating German children and youths as well.

Many German children and youths have problems catching up after having at­tended school in Africa. Their experiences at school have a major impact on the process of integration and play a substantial role with regard to developing a sense ofbeing at home.

As mentioned before, the fact that they look the same and speak the same langnage as everyone else can make integration easier for them than for mi­grants who lookdifferent and speak a different language. On the other hand, there is often no one around who shares their experiences and their back­ground. There are of course teachers, who understand that a child who has at­tended a school in Africa or elsewhere will have problems catching up and ad­justing. But on the whole, German re-migrants - "homecomers" - are ex­pected to function well in Germany.

From what I have been told and from what I have seen, it is not usually all that simple for re-migrant Germans to feel at home at school. Many teachers are experienced as friendly and helpful by repatriating children and youths, others as narrow-minded, ideology-ridden and nasty- and seemingly it takes only a few teachers to make life at school - and beyond - a rather unpleasant experience.

16 On German ideology about being German, see, e.g.: Dumont 1994; Bornemann 1991, 1993; Forsythe 1989.

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Thomas, now 32, 13 at the timehe came to Germany, told me: "One day I was late for school. When I entered the classroom the teacher said 'Thomas, you are not in Africa any more. This is Germany. This means you have to be on time." Now, one would think, this could happen to an African child as well - and it probably could. Y et, I am sure it is less likely, because it is a state­ment that could easily be regarded as racist if directed at an African child. Thomas told me that he was very angry and that he replied that he had to be on time in Africa as well.

When Susanne, 14 then, had problems in catching up in some of her classes, one of her teachers told her it would be better if she left the Gymna­sium ( German high schoolleading toAbitur!A-levels) to artend the Realschule (German high school, leading to Realschulabschluss!B-levels) instead, be­cause "you cannot advance from an African bush school to a German Gymna­sium just like that. I really don't understand how this could happen." Again, an African child might evoke the same kind of thoughts in a teacher, but I suppose he or she would be more careful when it comes to actually putting them into words and directing them at a child.

Peter, 29 at the time of the interview eight years ago, was 14 when he came to Germany and he spoke English fluently. He told me his English teacher - a German - could not deal with that fact. Once Peter - according to his teacher - made a mistake and the teacher remarked: "Maybe this is correct Pidgin English, but we leam Standard English here." This was not the only time such comments occurred, said Peter: "she told me that my English sounded like Bush English to her. And that with that kind of English I might get ahead in Africa, but not in Germany or elsewhere in the civilized world."

Karin, 14 when coming to Germany 14 years ago, described a scene from a geography lesson where at the time they were dealing with the "developing world," taking the example of the African country where Karin had lived. The teacher asked her what languages were spoken there and she named several. Apparently the teacher knew only one or two of the ones she mentioned, say­ing: "I have never heard about some of these languages you mention. They're probably just dialects." The teacher then asked her about the different ethnic groups living in that country and again Karin named several, of whom the teacher knew only some, saying: "Well, some of those tribes you mention ... I don't know whether they still exist... they arenot mentioned in my book."

From my own experience I remember that a teacher told us that it rained in Ghana every evening. I said that this is only the case in the rainy season and he reacted promptly: "Of course, it rains in Ghana every evening- Ghana is in the tropics, so you were probably already asleep or just didn't pay attention."

Instead of integrating the specific knowledge of children coming (back) from Africa, letting other students share it, some teachers seem to reject it al­together. Ideologically motivated reactions against German (re-)migrants were also not uncommon.

When Karl misbehaved in dass at the age of 12, punching his (white and German) neighbour, his teachers said: "Hey, you are not to play the colonial

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master here. I know how these whites behave in Africa, but you arenot going to do this here." And when Karl replied that he had not done what he was be­ing accused of, the teacher said: "I amjust telling you to make sure you know where you are now."

In many cases such accusations are not made as directly as in these exam­ples, but in the framework of dealing with specific topics. One teacher men­tioned that a lot of whites in Africa are like "modern slave-holders," without pointing out Hubert explicitly, who was 11 at the time (1983) and had just come back from Africa some months previous. Soon afterwards he was teased, children pointed at him, shouting "slave-holder, slave-holder!" Such accusations - whether expressed implicitly or explicitly - can have a variety of effects, depending on the character of the child and on other factors related to the respective social environment. Many children react by refusing to inte­grate, to comply with the mles, to go to school etc. I know of several cases where children ended up not eating. Hubert's mother told me: "He wouldn't eat. He wouldn't go to school. He said he would only eat if we would all go back to Africa." He finally started to eat again when his parents found a school in a nearby city where the settingwas more multicultural and teachers more open-minded.

In general, children and youths attending a boarding school or an interna­tional school in Germany are less likely to suffer discrimination and isolation. They are more likely to meet people who share their experiences and teachers who are used to dealing with the different backgrounds of their students. Y oung children attending boarding school tend to miss their families though, and, depending on the boarding school, may miss the freedom they are used to.

The more openly discriminating reactions of German teachers towards Ger­man repatriates seem to have become a lot less during the past decade or so. But even today, even those teachers who are experienced as friendly and help­ful usually make little effort to integrate (re-)migrant children's knowledge and experience into their classes. Michael, who is now 28 told me: "I think this is really strange. Our teacher took us to the Museum for Ethnology [Mu­seum für Völkerkunde] once and showed us a replica of an African village they had put up there. He read out some information and all that. .. but he never ever asked me to tell the dass something about what I knew about Af­rica. I think this is very strange." I think so too. Interestingly enough, even teachers who show some awareness of the impact of cultural differences when it comes to "real" migrant children - from Turkey for example - show little interest in German repatriates' cultural background. The latter rarely experi­ence any genuine interest in their past lives, in their experience and knowl­edge. With no peers to share their experience - a serious disadvantage com­pared to most "real" migrant children and youths - this lack of understanding and receptiveness encountered at school may very well deepen their feeling of being alone and isolated in what is supposed tobe their home country.

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Many (German) teachers clearly have little interest in what children and youths have to tell them about social and cultural worlds beyond their own. However, learning about different ways of life and different ways of looking at things - not only elsewhere in the world, but within Germany as well -takes teachers who value and integrate diversity in a class instead of disre­garding and suppressing it by ignoring their students' experience and knowl­edge.

"One day I will go back"- and then they hardly ever do: The African experience in retrospect

Especially children and youths whose experiences of re-migration to Germany are unpleasant tend to idealize their former home. They paint their former lives in Africa in bright colours, a life in stark contrast to the "grey life in Germany" (Tom, 11).

In some cases the idealization of "Africa" or "life abroad" goes along with a condenmation of life in Germany and with withdrawal from social life which - if pursued for long - can hinder children in their development and adolescents from growing up. lt makes (re-)integration a painful and some­times endless experience, which may end up in experiences of failure at dif­ferent levels of life.

This problern in its more destructive form seems to affect boys and male adolescents more than their female Counterparts. I know of several who have lived in Germany for more than 20 years, who are in their mid-thirties to early forties now and still fantasize about "going back" or "going to live abroad one day." Some of them have been back for short periods of time, but most of them have never made any serious attempt to actually establish an adult life "back in Africa." Why have they not done so? The reasons are quite simple, I think. lt is not an image of adult life in Africa that these adult men are adher­ing and clinging to. lt is an image of "Africa," of "life in Africa," of "life abroad" connected to childhood and youth. lt is an image that would not sm­vive a serious and adult "reality check." lt seems, in fact, that the fantasies of going back on the one hand and not making any serious attempt at putting them into practice on the other are connected to the fear of destroying one's bright, but little realistic images. Adult life in Africa - even if it takes place in a white, upper class context - is a life, which involves doing adult stuff- like work, maintaining a house, stmggling with shortcomings etc. lt is not just beach, parties, servants, swimming, sailing, and having fun. I am not saying that white childhood in Africa is all about that - but it is what these nostalgic images of life in Africa and life abroad in many cases largely consist of. By maintaining such an image and connecting it to (potential) adulthood in Africa - or rather, by not realizing its childhood and youth connotations - it may very well keep a person from growing up and leading a fulfilled adult life in Germany. Why does this problern seem to affect mainly males?

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I think the "superiority issue" described above affects men more seriously than women. Boys and young men in particular suffer more when they lose their upper dass status and have fewer options for compensating that loss. To (re-)gain an equivalent status, they need to change both their attitudes and their Iifestyle. Many expatriate children growing up in an expatriate environ­ment (in Africa) do not get a chance to leam what society will expect from them later on in Germany. Boys leam it even less and boys would need to leam it even more. They are expected to work (themselves) to make things work out for them. As we11 as that, it is more socia11y accepted for a wo man to share her husband's than foraman to share his wife's status, so getting mar­ried to a high-ranking spouse to secure or regain one's high status is an alter­native strategy for women more than it is for men. To be successful, to be so­cially accepted, to achieve something - you are expected to work for it in Germany, especially as a man and especia11y when not belanging to the upper classes. This is the lesson many expatriates have not leamed while growing up in Africa. Boys seem to suffer more when losing social status in Germany, probably because boys - especially adolescent ones - are more status­oriented, they depend on status more to impress their peers, girls, teachers etc. They feel more humiliated by "suddenly" having to work for a higher status that had seemed perfectly natural to them before. At the same time, they are -even more than girls - expected to be successful and tough. As a result, espe­cially male adolescents tend to suffer more seriously and more self­destmctively - often carrying their problems with them we11 into adulthood.

With regard to the bright images, which are maintained or constmcted of Africa in Germany - often to compensate for the "grey life here" - I would like to point out that in many such cases of retrospective idealization the im­ages are not so much related to Africa as such but to the kind of life one has lived - or retrospectively imagines having lived - there as a child and youth. lt is not necessarily Africa as such that is missed, but particular Iifestyles and ways of socializing. As we11, due to the lack of peers who share their experi­ence, many just want to escape their social and emotional isolation in Ger­many. I asked Roger, 17, after having lived in Germany for a year, whether he wanted to go back to the African country where he had lived before. He an­swered: "I don't care, as long as it is like it was before. I want the sun to shine, I want to go to the beach, I want to be free again. I want to have people around me who are like me. So I think, any Third World country would be fine with me."

"Going back" is important at least as a potential option- as a "way out" -for many. "If things don't work out here, 1'11 go back as soon as I can. 1'11 manage there for sure," said Karola (16) to me. Children, who got into closer contact with the cultural environment in Africa, sometimes also feel that lik­ing Germany is somewhat disloyal towards their former home. 17 They feel they need to defend Africa, especially because many people have a rather dis-

17 This has also been found by Pollock & van Reken 2004: 249.

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torted picture of it. Anja, 12, said to me a year ago: "I mean, if I say, I like it here, they will think, weH, of course, everyone would like Germany better than Africa. Because they think it's all poverty, snakes, hunger, and dirt in Af­rica. That's why sometimes I say I like Africa better, so that they will ask me why and then I can tell them good things about Africa."

Ways in and ways out

Many children who have lived large parts of their lives within expatriate envi­ronments have problems feeling at home and feeling integrated in Germany. Especially in cases where there is no opportunity to retum now and then to "check reality" as life goes on, they often idealize what they have left behind and construct a black-and-white image with Germany on the dark and Africa on the bright side. Some of these children tend to isolate themselves from their potential peers in Germany.

Children and youths often simply perpetuate the arguments of their par­ents. But, whereas they might be saying the same things, in many cases they suffer more. Whereas most parents have lived in Germany before, knowing life there will be different than in Africa, children are often not ( as) aware of this. Whereas most parents have maintained some social or farnily ties to Germany, which they can build on upon their retum, many children have not.

As a result offeeling lonely and "different," some children become loners. Others try to make friends but are rejected as arrogant and snobbish by others. Sabine, who came to live with her aunt in Germany at the age of 15, told me (atthe age of 31):

I think during my first two years after coming back, I must have been quite a snob. I told everyone about the servants we used to have, about our big house and all. Only when I was gradually made aware by some ofthe people I really liked about the rea­sons for all this luxury, did Istart being more sceptical. That's when I changed- and that's when my problems with my parents started.

This happens quite a lot as weH. Some children and youths brought up in ex­patriate environments turn against their parents once they become - and are made - aware of the injustices involved in some of their (past) privileges. At an age where young people are prone tobe critical of their parents anyway, the process of (re-)integration in Germany in combination with feelings of fmstration and rejection can also trigger conflicts between parents and chil­dren. Sandra, now 32, said: "After having lived in Germany for a year or so, at the age of 14, I virtually told my parents, they are to blame for the injustices in Africa, for the racism in Africa, and forme having been involved in all that." On the other hand, the reaction might be quite different. A child or young per­son might defend his or her parents when being attacked by others, like Karl did at the age of 12: "When my teacher told the dass that whites in Africa ex­ploit blacks, I told him he is a communist and that it is the white people in Af-

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rica who civilize Africa and that Africans needed whites to develop the place. Well, I defended my parents and myself I did not wanttobe a child of racists and exploiters." But setting oneself apart from one's parents often serves as a (first) step towards integration.

A lot of so-called "Third Culture Kids" in fact only become real "Third Cul­ture Kids" in Germany. They turn to self-exotization - but they do so as a "way in." In fact, some of them try to "turn black" somehow, they "African­ize" themselves in Germany, thereby finding a place for themselves in Ger­man society. From what I have heard and experienced, this is one ofthe most creative and promising ways of integration, because it combines "being dif­ferent" with "being here." Instead of cultivating difference by remaining an "ex-patriate" - someone who is really "out-of' -Germany, they turn-atleast a little bit - African IN Germany. Christian, now 29, told me that he started wearing his hair Rastafarian style at the age of 17, two year after he hadre­tumed from Africa: 18

I felt different but I looked the same. I wanted to show I am different. So I got dreadlocks to make me look African or... well, in a way, I suppose I wanted to show my African part. I had a friend who was half Ghanaian, half German. He had never been to Ghana, but he was always considered an exotic person somehow, whereas I, having sperrt 15 years in Africa, was considered the same as everyone else. I felt I was far more different than him. So I got myself dreadlocks and a Rasta cap. I also became an expert in Reggae and Highlife Music. In fact, that's when I started to feel at home somehow. After tuming my African part inside out... Yes, I tumed my Afri­can part inside out.

Turning the African part inside out" instead of carrying it "inside" enabled Christian to position hirnself culturally - and socially. He had found a way to integrate his African part by extemalizing it, thus making others aware of it. Several years later he cut his dreadlocks off. "I didn't need them any more. They had lost their importance. I could now do without them. I had somehow found my place in Germany without having lost my African part.

In many cases, children and youths only discover - or (re-)invent - their African identity in Germany. Some convert their expatriate identity into an African identity, because this is a more promising strategy for integrating "be­ing different" with "being here." Many children (initially) go into hiding in the process of being integrated - and disintegrate as a result, often going un­noticed until things get really bad. Disintegrating may end up in a vicious cir-

18 One of the more popular German TCKs - never labelled as such - is Momo (he has a brother as well, but he is not much of a TCK ). He was and still is one of the main figures in the Lindenstraße, a popular series on German TV, which has been running for more than 20 years. Momo had lived in Ethiopia between the age of eight and 18 before retuming to Murrich with his family. Momo has al­ways wom his hair Rastafarian style.

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cle, it leads to the deepening of a child' s or youth' desperation, it confirms its feeling ofbeing alone and ofbeing separated from the outside, German, world - which then leads to further disintegration. This can lead to complete emo­tional isolation, which in some cases can have devastating psychological and physical effects. Some of the people I know have suffered from anorexia or bulimia at some stage in their life. I know of two suicide attempts and of one suicide. There are many ways out of such vicious circles - and ways not to get into them in the first place. Getting out of hiding, extemalizing one's experi­ences and feelings - turning one' s self inside out - seems to be a first promis­ing step.

lt is usually children and youths who had a chance to leam how to deal with cultural differences and who were not secluded from their (African) envi­ronment that manage to integrate best in Germany. lt is not those who were brought up in an exclusive - and seclusive - expatriate environment. They may find integration difficult - because things are all so different - but they will not fall into despair. They may rebel, but they will not disintegrate. The more secluded the sociallife children are part of while living abroad, the more difficult integration is in Germany. German children who have been apart of their local environment in Africa, will not only have become more "African­ised" and know more about Africa and Africans, they usually have less - and less serious- emotional problems when integrating in Germany. They are bet­ter able to adjust, to integrate and to make the best of a situation.

lt is important for (re-)integrating children and youths to know that they are not the only ones. Therefore finding others sharing one's experience is important. Nevertheless, creating a "TCK" world and ideology of difference as a result of having been brought up in an expatriate environment may well not be primarily a sign of actual third-culturedness, but of a transformation of an expatriate ideology of "natural superiority" over the local African popula­tion to a "TCK" ideology of "cultural superiority" over the "ordinary" local German population - a transformation, which neither supports a child' s (re-) integration nor its further personal development.

References

Allen, Tim (ed.) 1994: When Refugees Go Horne: African Experiences. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press.

Arowolo, Olalele 0. 2000: Return Migration and the Problem of Reintegration. In: International Migration 38 (5): 59-82.

Bomemann, John 1991: Uniting the German Nation: Law, Narrative, and Historic­ity. American Ethnologist 20: 288-311.

Dumont, Louis 1994: German Ideology. Chicago: The University ofChicago Press. Engombe, Lucia 2004: Kind Nr. 95: meine deutsch-afrikanische Odyssee. Berlin:

Ullstein.

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Firat, Ibrahim 1991: Nirgends zu Hause!? Türkische Schüler zwischen Integration in der ERD und Remigration in der Türkei; eine sozialpsychologisch-empirische Untersuchung. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation.

Forsythe, Diana 1989: German Identity and the Problems of History. In: Tonkin, Elizabeth, Maryon McDonald & Maleolm Chapman ( eds. ): History and Ethnic­ity, London and New York: Routledge (ASA Monographs 27).

Hamilton, Hugo 2004: The loneliness ofbeing German. In: Guardian, 7.9.2004. Hammond, Laura 2004: This place will become home: refugee repatriation to

Ethiopia. Ithaca: Comell University Press. Kenna, Constance (ed.) 1999: Die "DDR-Kinder" von Namibia: Heimkehrer in ein

fremdes Land. Göttingen etc.: Hess. Knörr, Jacqueline 1990: Zwischen goldenem Ghetto und Integration. Ethnologische

Autobiographie und Untersuchung über das AufWachsen deutscher und Schwei­zer Kinder und Jugendlicher in der Dritten Welt am Beispiel Ghanas und ihre anschließende Eingliederung in Europa. Frankfurt & New York: Verlag Peter Lang.

Knörr, Jacqueline 1995: Kreolisierung versus Pidginisierung als Kategorien kultu­reller Differenzierung. Varianten neoafrikanischer Identität und Interethnik in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Münster & Hamburg: Lit.-Verlag.

Lenzin, Rene 20002: Afrika macht oder bricht einen Mann. Soziales Verhalten und

politische Einschätzung einer Kolonialgesellschaft am Beispiel der Schweizer in Ghana (1945-1966). Bem: Basler Afrika Bibliographien.

Martin, Jeannette 2005: Been-To, Burger, Transmigranten? Zur Bildungsmigration von Ghanaern und ihrer Rückkehr aus der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Mün­ster: Lit.-Verlag.

Paraschou, Athina 2001: Remigration in die Heimat oder Emigration in die Frem­

de? Beiträge zur europäischen Migrationsforschung am Beispiel remigrierter griechischer Jugendlicher. Frankfurt am Main etc.: Verlag Peter Lang.

Pollack, David C. & Ruth E. van Reken 20044: Third Culture Kids. The Experience

ofGrowing Up Among Worlds. Boston & London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Pollack, David C., Ruth E. van Reken & Georg Pflüger 2003. Third Culture Kids.

AufWachsen in mehreren Kulturen. Marburg: Francke. Smith, Carolyn D. ( ed.) 1996: Strangers at H ome: Essays on the E.ffects of Living

Overseas and Coming "Horne" to a Strange Land. Bayside, NY: Aletheia Pub­lications.

Stenzel, Amold, Hans G. Homfeldt & Günter Fenner 1989: Auszug in einfremdes Land? : türkische Jugendliche und ihre Rückkehr in die Türkei. Weinheim: Dt. Studien Verlag.

Storti, Craig 2001: The Art ofComing Horne. London: Brealey. Useem, John & Ruth H. Useem, R.H. 1955: The Westem-educated man in India:

Study of social roles. New York: Dryden Press. Wolbert, Barbara 1995: Der getötete Paß: Rückkehr in die Türkei; eine ethnologi­

sche Migrationsstudie. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

76

LEAVING THE SHTETL BEHIND.

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE ON JEWISH MIGRATION FROM

EASTERN EUROPE

JanaPohl

Whoever has eyes that see and ears that hear absorbs enough stories to last a lifetime

and to tell his children and grandchildren (Singer 1991: 172 ).

This well-known quotation from Isaac Bashevis Singer's children's story "Naftali the Storyteller & His Horse, Sus" exhibits how universal and perva­sive stories are and what a pivotal role they can play in passing on memories from generation to generation. According to Singer, stories for children are not just important as entertainment. lt is their content and their function of keeping the past with us that makes stories an essentialpartnot only of chil­dren's but also adults' lives. Singer, who emigrated from Poland to the USA, dedicated much of his work to the memory of his country of origin and of shtetllife; his Nobel-Prize-winning work is highly imbued with the culture of the Eastem European Jewry. Alida Allison observes that "[ ... ] his writing has uniquely contributed to keeping the memory ofEastem European Yiddish cul­ture alive" (Allison 1996: 20). Children's literature as a means of remember­ing the shtetl, a particular form of predominantly Jewish settlement in past Eastem Europe, will be the subject of the second part of the article in which I will look at native U.S.-American authors and their children's literature1 of the past 20 years and its depiction of the shtetl. My argument is that the depic­tion of the shtetl has been connected to the issue of migration2

- a fact that can be explained with historical and cultural circumstances which differ from Singer's times. This analysis necessitates some general remarks on children's literatme and migration to which the first part of my paper is dedicated.

"Children's literature" refers to literature for children as well as for young adults throughout this paper.

2 In children's literature the distinction between migrants, refugees and fugitives is not always easy to make. Therefore the term migration is used in a general sense.

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Children's Iiterature and migration

In answering questions about how children perceive migration and cultural differences, literatme which is primarily addressed to children and is therefore adapted to their age, can serve as a key tool. Authors of children' s literatme tell migration stories for children and modify their topic and way of writing to the implicit child readers. Stories are often narrated through the "eyes of a child character," either from third or first person. These narrative strategies appear to give insights into the characters' minds and their perception of mi­gration processes, as well as to the target audience of migration stories, the child readers. Certain gemes, such as autobiography, diary or epistolary novel seem more inclined to take readers into a character's mind than others. Never­theless, the reader has to keep in mind that it is in most cases the adult author who puts words into a character's head and mouth. The imagined child reader is one featme of children's literatme which in narrating migration stories fol­lows certain conventions. Two common traditions of children's literatme are happy ending and the orphan child as a protagonist. Migration stories are set in either the country of origin or the target country - or both - or simply focus on the joumey. In any case the happy ending is predicated on successful mi­gration3 which is indicated in the children's books by advancing assimilation to the target country, economic success, education, or by being joined by other farnily members. The orphan child as a protagonist4 entails the message that children are capable of mastering the joumey from one country to the other on their own. 5 These conventions have an important effect on the commercial success of a children' s book.

Migration has been a prospering topic of children's literatme. In accom­modating the migration issue, children' s literatme interlinks with aspects of multicultmalism, discrimination, tolerance, and cultural plmality for informa­tional, educational6 andlor aesthetic purposes. Migration stories, depicting the movement from one place to another, immanently revolve around people, countries, and cultures that differ from the reader's background.

Migration has also been referred to as object, i.e. topic, and subject at the same time because it serves as the autobiographical background for the au-

3 Returnmigration is rarely a topic in children's literature, except for the depiction offlight during war and retuming home.

4 Many farnaus hero(in)es of children's Iiterature are orphans, for example Johanna Spyri's Heidi, Lucy M. Montgomery's Arme of Green Gables, Peter Barrie's Peter Pan, and Joanne K. Rowling's Harry Potter.

5 See for example Amy Hest's picture book When Jessie came across the sea (1997) which teils the story ofthe orphan Jessie and her emigration from Russia to America or Lillian Hammer Ross's story Sarah, also known as Harrnah (1994) about 12-year-old fatherless Sarah who masters the joumey to America on her own.

6 See Ruth McKoy Lowery's (2001) sociological analysis of migration stories in children' s literature.

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thors, thus implying a strong notion of subjectivity. Authors, who migrated as children, tell of their own experiences and memofies or fictionalize their an­cestors' life stories in children's literature. Due to their personal connection to the topic, they attribute a strong sense of authenticity to their writing.

No matter if object or subject, the depiction of migration usually takes place in the (former) target country. lt is often the country of immigration and not the country of emigration where migration stories for children are gener­ated and within which they are situated. This perspective entails the questions of "who writes the story?" and "who writes whose story?" Writers with a mi­gration background are themselves successful immigrants or their descen­dants. Descendants of former migrants write the story of their own people, in contrast to authors who fictionalize the stories of ethnic groups other than their own. This question of perspective has important consequences for the stories and their claim for authenticity which shall be discussed later in the paper.

When looking at migration stories and their reflection of the children' s perception of the migration process, one automatically touches upon matters of representation. Representation is closely connected to narrative pattems. One particularly interesting narrative form of "looking into a character's mind" is the first person narration which many migration stories use. First person narration is a typical feature of autobiography. The following chart visualizes the migration story' s entanglement with all three gernes of life story writing: autobiography, biography and fiction. In a post-modern blurring of gerne boundaries children's Iiterature on migration (except non-fictional his­tory books) may incorporate elements of all three gernes (shown in the over­lapping of the three grey circles in the illustration below); autobiographical inclusion is not obligatory, for not every author includes autobiographical ref­erences in the book's story or paratexe (therefore the grey line is dotted). Many authors of children' s books on migration, as we shall see later on, choose to draw attention to their autobiographical tie to the subject for reasons of authenticity. Autobiography as one gerne of life story writing recounts the author' s life or parts of it in hovering between objectivity and subjectivity, in­cluding a retrospective account of a life's important events among which mi­gration certainly counts. Autobiographical accounts necessitate a narrator who is close in time and space and right in the middle of the story, which entails an impression of psychological depth and physical closeness. The narrator there­fore takes on an androgenic role between describing, observing, and engaging in the story. Nevertheless, all three gernes capture a sense of historical and socio-cultural context of the past or present migration process for which the black inner lines stand.

7 Paratext, a term coirred by Gerard Genette, embraces all the signals which ac­company the text, such as title, preface, notes, and all signals mediated by the book, such as font, illustrations, jacket etc.

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Illustration 1: Genres of life story writing

Contrasting with autobiography, a biography is a narrative account of some­one else's life, describing the individual in the context of his/her life. Both bi­ography and historical fiction recreate the past, mostly through chronologi­cally narrating past events. In writing historical fiction authors assume the dual role of a Storyteller and a historian at the same time. Migration stories therefore always contain elements of biography, because migration as an im­portant life event is part of the plot. Proceeding from the premise that the line between true and fictional events in an autobiography or a biography can be blurred, we can conclude that text and protagonists of migration stories infil­trate the area of fiction in which the story is a product of the author' s imagina­tion. Many migration stories can be completely classified as fiction. Regard­less of the genre, all migration stories are embedded in socio-cultural context and the literary system' s traditions and conventions at their time of publica­tion and reception (the latter can but need not coincide).

By describing migration from children's perspectives, children's Iiterature not only represents certain migration waves. lt documents the perception of cultural varieties and the assimilation to a new home. lt informs about the his­torical period, in which migration took place, and the formation of an immi­grant nation, such as the U.S.-American. At the sametime children's literatme recollects the life of a past culture and can thereby keep the heritage of an eth­nic group alive, pass it on, and mediate it, from adult generations (grandpar­ents or parents) to children. Migration stories, which I will focus on in the second part of the paper, stand for a generation of contemporary North American writers of children's Iiterature on migration who narrate past migra-

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tion stories for today' s children. In blending life story gemes, they all depict the migration of Jews from Eastern Europe to North America and remember the shtetl which stands for the country of origin oftheir protagonists'.

Remernhering the shtetl in contemporary U.S.-American children's Iiterature

Adult literatme as well as children' s literatme has a long tradition of describ­ing the shtetls8 (shtetlekch ), "small market towns in Eastern Europe rauging in size from 1,000 to 20,000 people. Most shtetlekch had between 1,000 and 5,000 people, with the majority of the population being Jewish" (Eliach 1998: 782). Since the reign of Catherine II until the revolution in 1917, Jews in Rus­sia were required to live in a special zone in the West of the empire which made up about four per cent ofRussia and was called the Pale ofSettlement.9

Even within the Pale, Jews suffered discrimination. They had to pay double taxes, could not buy or lease land and were excluded from higher education.

Shtetls existed both in the Pale and in Poland. Life in a shtetl often meant a life in poverty in a traditional Jewish community. Anti-Semitism, devastat­ing pogroms, especially after the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881, restricted educational and economic opportunities as well as the threatening army service for Jewish boys pushed more than two million Jews out of the shtetls to America. America, in particular the USA, radiated an image of the Golden Land, where the streets were paved with gold, and an image of the Promised Land, where Jews were free to exercise their religion. These images of America can be pointed out as major pull-factors. Eastern European Jews made up the vast majority of the Jewish immigrants in America in this migra­tion wave around the turn ofthe last century. The Eastern European Jewry and this specific migration wave have been a reoccurring topic in adult literatme andin children's literature. Despite the existing historical knowledge concern­ing life in the shtetl, it has often been described as an image, partly romanti­cized in literature, paintings 10 and in the children' s Iiterature of the 1970s and 1980s11 as well.

In 1984, Barbara Mirel described the depiction of the shtetl in North American children's Iiterature in her paper "Lost worlds of tradition: Shtetl stories for suburban children." According to her, shtetllife and its cultural set­ting are lost for modern young readers and shtetl stories by "classic" authors like Sholem Aleichern or Singer lack an audience. She draws attention to a group of books which give an introduction to Eastern European Jewish life

8 Shtetl (shtetlekch as one plural form) is a Yiddish word, derived from the Middle High German "stete!" which isadiminutive form oftheGerman "Stadt" (town).

9 The Pale of Settlement included the territory of present-day Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belorussia.

10 Schoeps 2000: 160, seealso Raskies 2000. 11 Mirel 1984.

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JANAPOHL

because she considers these books important for the recreation of a past civili­zation and identity as well as for educational purposes. Mirel rightly points out that famous Jewish literatme about the 191

h century has a strong tradition of portraying the shtetl with its manifold cultural and religious facets. In terms ofYiddish children's Iiterature Aleichem's Motl Peysi dem Khazns (first pub­lished in 1916) and Singer's Storiesfor Children (first published in 1984) are well-known examples. This illustrates that the shtetl as it represents history and cultural heritage of a long period of the Eastern Emopean Jewry's past has a long tradition in literatme in general as well as in children' s literature. Literary narratives about the shtetl often focus on the time under Czar Nicho­las II of Russia and particularly around the turn of the last century. When looking at the so-called classics of Eastern Emopean Jewish Iiterature (for ex­ample Yitskhok Leyb Peretz or Sholem Asch) and their depiction ofthe shtetl, specific essential featmes re-occm: stories display community life which ex­isted in isolation from the Russian empire. They tell the reader about tradi­tions and customs existing in the shtetl, including descriptions of various rep­resentations of Jewish religious culture such as synagogues, rabbis, and cheders12

. In analyzing dassie Eastern Emopean Jewish Iiterature such as Aleichern and Asch, Dan Miron delineates the fire metaphor, the unexpected visitor, and multiple scenes of departme as elements of the shtetl image, the latter of which is particularly important for contemporary North American children's literatme (Miron 2000: 16-32).

However, contemporary and therefore retrospective children' s Iiterature about the shtetl especially in the time of the Russian empire differs in the de­piction of past reality. Mirel outlined two major themes of American born au­thors in their treatment of the shtetl in children's fiction as "the response to anti-Sernitism and the tensions arising from the infiltration of modern ideas into traditional patterns of Jewish life" (Mirel 1984: 7). She refers to U.S.­American authors and their works published in the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. Her examples - Chaya M. Bmstein' s two novels Rifka bangs the Teakettle (1970) and Rifka grows up (1976), Leonard Everett Fisher's A Rus­sian Farewell (1980), Anita Heyman's Exit from Home (1977), and Marge Blaine's Dvora 's Journey (1979) - are all completely set in Eastern Emope incorporating the atmosphere of the shtetl with its inherent reactions to anti­Sernitism and its blend of modern ideas and traditional Jewish life. Scenes of departme are introduced only late in the plots. Hence, these examples from the 1970s focus on the shtetl and not on the experience of departme.

In the following part I will look at the development of the shtetl topic in U.S.-American children's literatme during the past 20 years, i.e. since the publication of Mirel's article. Is the distinct culture of the shtetl still remem­bered in contemporary U.S.-American children's and young adult literatme and if so, has its depiction changed over time? These questions can be an­swered with a clear yes. The high number of publications of children' s fiction

12 Jewish school where children were instructed in Hebrew and read the Bible.

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LEA VING THE SHTETL BEHIND

on Eastem Emopean Jewry proves that Eastem Emope - although its depic­tion has changed- still is an important topic in U.S.-American Jewish chil­dren's literature. I will examine whether Barbara Mirel's assumptions regard­ing U.S.-American authors and their treatment of the shtetl arestill applicable to the U.S.-American children's Iiterature on the shtetl nowadays and will show how the depiction of the shtetl has been connected to the migration from it. Contemporary U.S.-American authors portray the shtetl differently due to deviant geographical, cultmal, social, and historical circumstances.

The focus of today's U.S.-American children's literatme differs from the dassie Eastem Emopean Jewish Iiterature and from the U.S.-American chil­dren's literatme 20 years ago. In remembering the shtetl in children's litera­ture, the emphasis has been put more and more on the migration process. The "multiple scenes of departme," outlined by Dan Miron for the dassie Eastem Emopean Jewish adult Iiterature about the shtetl, feature strongly in the U.S.­American children's literatme of the past 20 years. Stories usually indude de­scriptions of the shtetl and the living conditions in Eastem Emope as the country of departme, often from the perspective of a child narrator. But shtetl depiction and migration have been strongly linked. This corresponds to the historical reality in the shtetls in which mass emigration to North America had been part of everyday life since the pogroms after the assassination of Czar Alexander II. The focus on migration is especially evident in pictme books which shall be discussed first. The emphasis on the joumey aspect becomes apparent not only in the stories as such but in their titles as well: Escaping to America. A True Story (Schanzer 2000), Journey to Ellis lsland. How my Fa­ther Came to America (Bierman 1998), When Jessie Came across the Sea (Hest 1997), Journey to the Golden Land (Rosenblum 1992), Leaving for America (Bresnick-Perry 1992), andAnnushka 's Voyage (Tarbescu 1998).

The joumey aspect underlines the autobiographical background of many children's books on the Eastem Emopean Jewry and the shtetl. Many of the authors articulate such a background in their book's paratext. Edith Tarbescu, for example, dedicates her book "To the memory of my parents, Esther and Benjamin Roseman, whose names are inscribed on a wall at Ellis Island." She writes the book "For my mother, who has lived in many countries" and in­dudes a picture showing her mother and aunt after their arrival in America. In her author's note she explains: "Ever since I was a child I heard the story of how my mother made thatjoumey at the age of 13. This is her story." Rosalyn Schauzer bases her book on her father' s and his family' s story and dedicates it "To the memory of my family and to everyone who has travelled from another country to begin a new life on these shores." Roslyn Bresnick-Perry explains in the author's note that she was bom in the shtetl Wysokie-Litewskie and later emigrated to America. Her pictme book's opening lines are "We were leaving for America. My mother and I were leaving om shtetl, om little town ofWysokie, to join my father" (Bresnick-Perry 1992: 4). Carol Bierman's pic­ture book is a biographical account of her father's migration to America, showing pictures of him in the book. She sets the story in a little village in

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JANAPOHL

Russia called Pinsk; the setting is underpinned with material signifiers like a photograph showing Cyrillic letters and a samovar. Yiddish words, e.g. "mentsch" or "tsuris"13 (1998: 14), and Jewish names such as Yehuda, the main character, indicate a Jewish context in Journey to Ellis lsland. There is, however, no mentioning of a shtetl or Jewish religious life. As the title indi­cates the story is mainly about the joumey to one's destination in exile. The turmoil of World War I in Russia is mentioned as a reason for emigration (16) as well as the farnily encountering a pogrom while fleeing - however, the fo­cus is completely on the joumey as such when the process of migration is de­scribed. First big brother Abe, whom the main character Yehuda didn't even get to know, migrates to America. He is followed by his father, then by Ye­huda himself, his sister, and mother. The book charts various stages of their joumey: the long marchout of Russia, to Poland, to Rotterdam where they boarded the ship, the joumey on board to America, the inspections on Ellis Is­land, and finally the arrival in New York. Thus, the joumey and migration fo­cus is so pronounced that the shtetl background is shunned by it.

The autobiographical background reveals that many writers are the de­scendants of successful immigrants, a fact that encourages a positive attitude towards the target country. An autobiographical connection appears to en­hance authenticity. A paratext's revelation of an author's autobiographical tie to the subject seems to underscore the story's genuineness. An author who an­nounces that a story is based on events in his/her own life presents him/herself as a reliable source and is therefore assumed to produce a reliable text, based on first -hand experience.

Books by descendants of immigrants tackle the question: why are we as the descendants of Eastem European Jewish immigrants here in America and how did we get here? This explains why migration from the shtetl is of central importance to the younger generation of U.S.-American writers and why they focus on migration from the shtetl. Many contemporary U.S.-American au­thors are the descendants of successful immigrants who came to America about a century ago. They often tell the stories of their families. Therefore their emphasis is on the push-factors that drove Jews out of the shtetl and across the ocean. Therefore anti-Semitism and pogroms often figure more prominently in their stories than Jewish religious life and shtetl culture. There­fore they focus on the "new country," which is at the sametime the country of their implicit readers.

Barbara Cohen's picture book Gooseberries to Dranges (Cohen 1982), il­lustrated by Beverly Brodsky, for instance, is "atme story of a little girl who was bom in Eastem Europe and came to live in America" according to the front flap. The illustrator dedicates the book "To my mother and the memory of my father whose stories of the old country inspired the creation of this

13 Mentsch and tsuris are explained by the author in the glossary in the end of the book. Mentsch is explained as "The Yiddish word for 'man.' Mentsch also means a decent, honorable person" and tsuris as "The Yiddish word for 'trou­bles'" (Bierman 1998: 48).

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LEA VING THE SHTETL BEHIND

book" (imprint). 14 This is the story of the illustrator's mother. In an email Beverly Brodsky informed me that "This is certainly a story about my own mother" whom Barbara Cohen "interviewed to get information for her text." The first third of the book embraces scenes of the shtetl. Already on the sec­ond doublespread war and Russian soldiers terrorizing the Jews are introduced (see illustration 2). The text says:

But winter came, and war. W e put feather pillows araund the walls of the rooms so if bullets hit our house they wou1dn't hurt us. So1diers in stee1 he1mets searched eve­ry comer, 1ooking for boys to take away to the army. They tore the mezzuzah15 off the door jamb because they thought go1d was hidden inside. There was no go1d in­side the mezzuzah, on1y a 1ittle scroll inscribed with words from the Bib1e (Cohen 1982: n.p16

).

ßut\O.IIltcrcanlr,,.ro.lwar. Wcput!<:iniii.-'Tp·lk"'-:;'mJUnd·he

",·dlscithe rooms:10 1fbu!l~u hu '~" h..~ rhcy "nulJn't hun

llS. SoUoe" in sr~ helmet<. se:~rrhnl .,,·~ry ............... Wine ~ .... h1,1 ro tah~ 311':1Y cu thc arm~ Thto,· rrrc rhe n=cah nff the Jo;,.. jombl>ecatocrhevrhot~r~,IJ tu.Um 11'\.>~.:k. Thcre ""d.'>l\<' gniJ lllSidcthem•."lru..-lh, ooly ahule:<rollu\'iCI"!OOJ

"..J'""'..b(n."uthcThl>lc.

Illustration 2: from Barbara Cohen 's Gooseberries to Dranges (1982, Wustration by Beverly Brodsky/7

Cohen's little Eastem European village is characterized by anti-Semitism, poverty, and hunger. The book's focus is on the joumey out of the shtetl and the new life in America, the latter making up about two thirds of the book. Cohen, as well as the authors of the above-mentioned picture books, all intro-

14 I am indebted to Beverly Brodsky for sharing this information on the creation of Gooseberries to Oranges.

15 A mezzuzah is a scroll ofparchment with important words from the Torah, kept in a small container made from wood, p1astic or meta1 and nai1ed to the doorpost of a Jewish home.

16 N.p. stands for no pagination. 17 The picture is reprinted with Beverly Brodsky 's permission.

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JANAPOHL

duce migration very early in the plot. That does not leave much room for lengthy shtetl descriptions. In the majority of the books the "village" is not even called a shtet/18

. But the books do include various shibboleths for Jewish culture (e.g. mezzuzahs, Sabbath candles or Jewish names such as Avrom­Leyb or Feygl) and a setting in past Eastem Europe.

The autobiographical aspect can only serve as one possible explanation of the shift of focus. The growing remoteness of the shtetl experience is another. The time gap between the shtetl culture in the Russian empire as the (histori­cal) background of the migration of the Eastem European Jews and the narra­tive accounts of it is constantly getting larger.

Classic Eastem European Jewish writers such as Aleichem, Peretz, and later on Singer still knew the shtetllife personally and had the chance to write from that personal experience. For modern U.S.-American authors- with or without autobiographical ties to the subject - the shtetl is a historical and fic­tional subject which is treated as such: sometimes authors treat the sujet with a lot of care, involving meticulous research; sometimes books are simply set in that time (at the turn of the last century) and place (a Jewish village, Jewish town or shtetl) without further explication ofthe shtetl as historical reality.

Elvira Woodruff's picture book The Memory Coat (1999) is one example of a fictitious account of the shtetl and migration to North America. lt starts with the following introduction to the setting: "Long ago, a young girl named Rachel and her cousin, Grisha, lived with their farnily in a small town, far away in Russia. Such a town was called a shtetl. lt was where many of the Jewish people lived. There they worked as cobblers, blacksmiths, tailors, and shopkeepers. Their little wooden houses and shops ran all along the cobble­stone streets" (n.p.). The shtetl description includes many shtetl elements: Woodruff describes the community life in a shtetl and people's occupations; a synagogue is mentioned and so are prayers. The Yiddish langnage is dis­played, and there is a pogrom which triggers the family's departure for Amer­ica. Woodruff gives an impression of shtetllife and culture, and at the same time explains the need to leave, taking on the adventure story of migrating to a new country. The illustrations are not particularly shtet/-specific. The Russian setting cannot be deducted, but they show people in traditional clothing and men with long beards - as a sign of traditional Jewishness. The Memory Coat depicts shtetllife to some amount and adheres to parts of the common shtetl depiction. Woodruff's picture book, however, exceeds in its shtetl description many of the other picture books mentioned.

Mirel's statement (1984, see above) is still applicable insofar as "the re­sponse to anti-Semitism" features in the books. Anti-Semitism is mainly de­picted in form of pogroms which have become an important component in the shtetl description. Along with the response to anti-Semitism comes the escape

18 The omission ofthe word "shtetl" can also be explained with the implicit readers of the picture books and the image of children; "shtetl" is after all of Yiddish origin and needs to be "translated" or explained to an American child reader.

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from it. Emigration from the country in which pogroms take place is a logical conclusion. Y oung adult fiction, as we shall see, accommodates this compo­nent and at the same time exhibits in many cases the above-mentioned bio­graphical factor ofthe literary shtetl depiction.

Illustration 3: by TrinaSchart Hyman, in Kathryn Lasky's "The Night Journey" (1981/ 9

Y oung adult books often exhibit an ( auto )biographical link regarding the shtetl and the migration process. Kathryn Lasky' s books are just one example. Her first (!) young adult novel, The Night Journey (1981), is based on her aunt's story of coming to America. Lasky herself notes: "My grandparents had all died by the time I was three, but that did not prevent me from asking my parents about their journeys to America. And still I had aunts and uncles who remembered" (as quoted in the paratext in Lasky 1998: 181).20 Not surpris­ingly, her book is written for her aunt, "For Ann Lasky Smith, who remem­bers." The character great-grandmother Sashie, who is based on Lasky's aunt, describes her flight from the Russian empire to North America- an experi­ence which is central to the novel. She passes on the story to her great­granddaughter Rachel before her own death. Lasky depicts her family' s story about coming to the United States, and the way the shtetl is remernbered be­speaks the "response to anti-Semitism:" the shtetl with its major elements is

19 Reprinted with the permission ofPenguin Group: New York. 20 For the autobiographical background see also Brown (1998: 58f.) and Lasky

Knight (1985: 28ff.).

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JANAPOHL

subsumed under the flight process. lt is associated with pogroms, violence, death, and the Russians as the originators of pogroms. During the flight Sa­shie' s family passes through a shtetl where a pogrom had just taken place. The setting is described as such:

Sashie and Ghisa peeked between the slats of the wagon. And through the cracks and holes of the boards, the fragments of total destruction appeared like scraps from the apocalypse - a charred cart with a blackened hand reaching stiffly out; a cow bloated in death, its pointy hooves faintly absurd as they stuck straight up into the sky; bumed-out cottages, their windows like blind eye sockets; a large star ofDavid, once fastened to a prayerhouse door, lay scorched in a pile of rubble. The only so und was the soft hiss ofthe still-smoldering fires (Lasky 1981: 136).

Trina Schart Hyman's illustration (above) captures this gloomy image of the shtetl.

In The Night Journey Jewish religious life such as holidays, prayers, food, and a sense of Jewish community life are present in connection with the flight. The story's narration epitomizes hybrid remembering processes: the story is narrated in a blend of present and past in which passages shift between Rachel as a third person narrator in the present and Sashie as a young girl experi­encing migration in the past. At the same time the author, Kathryn Lasky, re­members her aunt's migration story in writing an autobiographical young adult novel about it, herself standing for the generation remembering its cul­tural heritage. 21

Margery Evemden's young adult book The Dream Keeper (1985) does not specifically express an autobiographical connection of author and subject but her book's dedication shows a personal biographical link: "In Memory of Mary Carbolofsky, Christian Gulbrandsen, and the uncounted brave children of many races and creeds who have followed their dreams across the seas to America." As Lasky's The Night Journey this book is also part of the so­called "grandmothers-fiction,"22 meaning that the plot revolves around a grandmother, Bobe, and the granddaughter, Becka. Both assume central plot functions: the grandmother' s life story, as the main part of the novel, is passed on to her granddaughter who is to keep the memory of her grandmother alive after her death. This narrative constmction accommodates the migration proc­ess as an important historical event in the past. Bobe emigrated with part of her family to North America from a Polish shtetl. This story is embedded in a

21 See also Broken Song (2005), the sequel to The Night Joumey. 22 The term "grandmothers-fiction" is taken from the Cataloging-in-Publication

(CIP) Data from the Library of Congress which appears in brackets in the im­print of children's books. The library's staff compiles descriptions of the books and analyses the subjects. They determine subject headings of which grand­mothers-fiction is one. It simply means that "a significant aspect of the book is about grandmothers, and it is a book of fiction." The quotation as well as the in­formation about compiling CIP-Data are taken from an email from the Library of Congress (18.03.2004). I am indebted to the Library of Congress for answering my questions on grandmothers-fiction.

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frame set in the present in which Becka gets to know about her grandmother's life in the Polish shtetl and life afterher migration. The story's part which is set in the shtetl takes up most of the novel. Evemden gives a thorough account of life in the shtetl and of shtetl culture including its sense of isolation from the Polishand Russian surroundings: "Here in their higgledy-piggledy shtetl, like an island in the great sweep of Polish fanulands and forests, they had their own tiny home with its three, crowded rooms [ ... ]" (Evemden 1985: 44). She weaves the historical frame of reference into the shtetl description: "That good life had been cmelly swept away by the Tsar's soldiers and by a pogrom, one of those terrible raids during which Jewish people were destroyed and their property seized. Jews had no right to own land and fine houses, the ma­rauders had said. Mama could never bring herself to speak of the pogrom, only of the shimmering days of her youth" (Evemden 1985: 45f.). Evemden's shtetl exhibits a comprehensive spectmm of shtetl features: it includes the his­torical education system with its eheder and yeshiva23 and its inherent differ­ences for Jewish boys and girls, the community life, and a shtetl's social hier­archies when it comes to marriage and marriage brokers (Evemden 1985: 57). But most importantly, it comprises various aspects of traditional Jewish reli­gious life such as prayers, sitting shiva, keeping the Sabbath, going to shuP4

,

studying the Bible, and holidays such as Passove?5.

The past decade was reticent about shtetl fiction in young adult literature. lts young adult books with the Eastem European Jewry as a subject are mainly set in the new country, i.e. the USA and Canada. The migration tie is pursued to such an extent that the immigrants' fate is predominantly explored after the immigration to the new country. Eastem Europe and to some degree the shtetl seiVe as a backdrop for the characterization of protagonists and are therefore not of central importance to the narrative. Kathryn Lasky's young adult book Dreams in the Golden Country: the Diary of Zipporah Feldman, a Jewish Immigrant Girl. New York City, 1903 (1998) is a diary ofthe immigrant girl Zippy set in New York City. This book is completely set in New York City in the first decade of the 20th century, right after the family 's arrival on Ellis Is­land. The shtetl is depicted retrospectively in the book and only in minor pas­sages, for example when the place of origin is given as background informa­tion: "we are from Zarichka, a little village in Minsk Gubernia" (Lasky 1998: 4). The past of the shtetl is narrated through the diary in form of side refer­ences which are often triggered by the Zippy's mother's old country ways. They are opposed to Zippy's rapid assimilation and therefore cause conflicts: "I hate Mama's old country ways. I hateher shtetl, village ways" (113). So the old country and the shtetl are deployed for comparative purposes: the old country and the shtetl are associated with traditionalism and old ways for

23 Yeshiva: traditional rabbinical school for the study ofthe Talmud. 24 Shul: Jewish house ofworship, a congregation; used as a synonym for synagogue

as well. 25 For information on the Jewish shtetl culture, its customs, traditions and holidays

see Zborowski & Herzog 1967, Estraikh & Krutikov 2000, and Schoeps 2000.

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JANAPOHL

which the mother stands. America, conversely, stands for change and modem­ism, hence for new ways.

The Eastem European Jewry still features strongly in contemporary young adult literature, but not necessarily the shtetl. lt is here in young adult Iitera­ture w here the shift of focus is especially striking. There are a large number of books which simply delineate their protagonists' origin in Russia or a little village in Russia without exploring the shtetl itselfbecause the books' focus is on the new country. Johanna Hurwitz, for example, describes the fate of her protagonist Dossi in New York City and Vermont in Faraway Summer (1998). She outlines her past in Russia in a few sentences (13f.) but the book's theme, Dossi' s summer vacation with the Fresh Air Fund, takes on as a central theme. Hurwitz explains in the author' s note of the book' s sequel Dear Emma (Hurwitz 2002) that life in Russia was determined by "enforced inscription in the army, extreme poverty and starvation, and very limited chances for educa­tion and employment. Russian Jews also faced pogroms where hundreds of people were attacked and murdered for no reason other than their religion. And so people kept on coming" (146). Karen Hesse, who described an adven­turous flight from imperial Russia to North America in her autobiographical book Letters from Rifka (Hesse 1993), explores the separation of children from their parents during the influenza epidemic in Boston in 1918 in her book A Time of Angels (Hesse 1995). The plot revolves around the Russian Jewish immigrant child Haunah whose mother "went to Russia to take care of Bubbe" (14) and who is now trapped in a "village in Russia" (51) due to World War I. Butthis information is mediated in the background. The novel centers on Hannah's and her sister's fate in the United States. Hazel Krantz pursues the story of the Jewish girl Sally Gottesman in Colorado in the 1880s and 1890s in her novel Looking to the Hills (Krantz 1995). Sally gets to know Daniel Rabinowitz, a Russian Jewish immigrant. A Russian Jewish back­gmund is imputed to him, but it remains only the background of the mass emigration of the Eastem European Jewry since the beginning of the 1880s in which "most were ordinary folk from the small shtetls who refused to live un­der the painful restrictions of their native lands where good education was al­most impossible, many occupations forbidden, and freedom to live wherever they wanted denied" (86).

The majority of the young adult novels of the past decade still features the history of the Eastem European Jewry, but not in the old country and not in the shtetl. Russia and the shtetl simply assume a characterizing function in or­der to outline a protagonist's background. The described development shows that the shtetl culture is less remernbered in U.S.-American young adult Iitera­ture of the past decade than it was 20 years ago, when Barbara Mirel drew at­tention to this fact. The focus of these young adult novels is not on the old country, but on the new country, the former target country of migration. This country coincides with the books' intended audience. By incorporating this topic, young adult literatme takes up issues of forming teenage identities in an immigrant nation. Contemporary U.S.-American picture books with their

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graphic and visual opportunities are inclined to tell joumey stories. They also focus on migration but still exhibit shtetl settings. Regardless ofthe focus, mi­gration stories for children invoke the genealogical connection of migration and children' s literature. Migration inscribes itself into the genealogy of peo­ple whose identity is defined by being first, second or third innnigrant genera­tion. Migration stories are one means of weaving collective memory in an immigrant nation together. They not only contribute to cultural heritage of ethnic groups, but at the same time show how the process of remembering can be embedded in the fiction itself as in the case of the before-mentioned grandmothers-fiction.

In hovering between autobiography, biography, and fiction migration sto­ries for children can give an insight into a child's perception of the migration process. Stories transporting such cultural memory remain, however, in the geme's boundaries and evidence the remembering process of a generation as shown for the example of the shtetl. However, these narrations have been cre­ated by an adult retrospectively after the migration through an individual and historicallens.

In shifting the focus away from elaborate shtetl descriptions, as done in the 1970s and 1980s, to an emphasis on the joumey to the target country and the increasing portrayal of life in the new country, the shtetl is on its way of re­ceding into the background in contemporary children' s Iiterature on migration. With this increasing focus on migration and the target country of migration, contemporary U.S.-American children's Iiterature on Eastem European Jewry, and especially the young adult book of the past decade, exhibit a tendency of decreasing depiction of culture of origin. Picture books and young adult books have tumed their attention to the shaping of national, i.e. U.S.-American, his­tory and national heritage. In taking up migration as a topic, children's Iitera­ture not only documents and informs, but can also assume an important func­tion in shaping cultural memory, especially where children's books with mi­gration topics are used for teaching lessons on history and ethnic diversity. The above-mentioned picture book Escaping to America, for example, is in­cluded in a history unit on immigration for second grade26 by the curriculum "Bringing History Horne," which has been funded by U.S. Department of Education Teaching American History Grants. 27 Migration stories are often set in a historical context recounting the migration history of ancestors. By remembering past migration processes children' s Iiterature sets out to keep these (hi)stories in the consciousness of the younger generation and thereby tries to pass on cultural memory.

26 See http://www. bringinghistoryhome.org/g2-imm/lp/immigrationhistory .doc and http://www.bringinghistoryhome.org/g2-imm/biblio/g2-imm-Booklist.html (July 20, 2004).

27 See http://www.bringinghistoryhome.org (July 20, 2004 ).

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References

Aleichem, Sholem 2002: The Letters ofMenakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl and MotZ, the Cantor's Son. Translated by Hillel Halkin. New Haven: Yale UP (Modem Yiddish Library).

Aleichem, Sholem 1996: A Treasury of Sholom Aleichern 's Children 's Stories. Se­lected and translated by Aliza Shevrin. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson.

Allison, Alida 1996: Isaac Bashevis Singer. Children 's Stories and Childhood Memoirs. New York: Twayne (Twayne's United States Authors Series 661).

Bierman, Carol (with Barbara Hehner) 1998: Joumey to Ellis Island. How My Fa­ther Came to America. Illustrated by Laurie McGaw. New York: Hyperion, Madison Press.

Blaine, Marge 1979: Dvora 's Joumey. Illustrated by Gabriel Lisowski. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Bresnick-Perry, Roslyn 1992: Leavingfor America. Pictures by Mira Reisberg. San Francisco: Children's Book Press.

Brown, Joanne 1998: Presenting Kathryn Lasky. New York: Twayne Publishers (The United States Authors Series 708).

Burstein, Chaya M. 1970: Rifka Bangs the Teakettle. Illustrated by the author. New Y ork: Harcourt, Brace & W orld.

Burstein, Chaya M. 1976: Rifka Grows up. Illustrated by the author. New York &

London: Bonim. Cohen, Barbara 1982: Gooseberries to Dranges. Pictures by Beverly Brodsky. New

York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard. Eliach, Yaffa 1998: There Was Once a World: A Nine-Hundred-Year-Old Chronicle

ofthe Shtetl ofEishyshok. Boston: Little, Brown. Estraikh, Gennady & Mikhail Krutikov (eds.) 2000: The Shtetl: Image and Reality.

Papers of the Second Mendel Friedman International Conference of Yiddish. Oxford: Legenda (European Humanities Research Centre. Studies in Yiddish 2).

Evemden, Margery 1985: The Dream Keeper. New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books.

Fisher, Leonard Everett 1980: A Russian Farewell. Illustrated by the author. New York: FourWinds.

Hesse, Karen 1993: Letters from Rifka. N ew Y ork: Puffin. Hesse, Karen 1997 [1995]: A Time of Angels. New York: Hyperion. Hest, Amy 1997: When Jessie Came across the Sea. Illustrated by P.J. Lynch. Lon­

don, Boston, Sydney: Walker Books [London: Walker Books, 1997]. Heyman, Anita 1977: Exit from H ome. N ew Y ork: Crown. Hurwitz, Johanna 2002: Dear Emma. Illustrated by Barbara Garrison. New York:

HarperCollins. Hurwitz, Johanna 2000 [1998]: Faraway Summer. Illustrated by Mary Azarian. New

Y ork: HarperCollins. Krantz, Hazel 1995: Look to the Hills. Philadelphia & Jerusalem: The Jewish Publi­

cation Society.

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Lasky, Kathryn 1981: The Night Joumey. With drawings by TrinaSchart Hyman. N ew Y ork: Puffin.

Lasky, Kathryn 1998: Dreams in the Golden Country: The Diary of Zipporah Feldman, a Jewish Immigrant Girl. New York City, 1903. New York: Scholastic (Dear America ).

Lasky, Kathryn 2005: Broken Song. New York: Viking. Lasky Knight, Kathryn 1985: Atlantic Circle. New York, London: Norton. McKoy Lowery, Ruth 2001: Immigrants in Children 's Literature. New York, Wash­

ington, D.C. etc.: Lang (Rethinking Childhood 13). Mirel, Barbara 1984: Lost Worlds of Tradition: Shtetl Stories for Suburban Chil­

dren. Children 's Literature Association Quarterly 9 (1 ): 6-9. Miron, Dan 2000: The Image ofthe Shtetl and other Studies ofModem Jewish Lit­

erary Imagination. Syracuse, N ew Y ork: Syracuse University Press. O'Sullivan, Emer 2005: Comparative Children 's Literature. London: Routledge. Rosenblum, Richard 1992: Joumey to the Golden Land. Illustrated by the Author.

Philadelphia & Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society. Roskies, David G. 2000: The Shtetl as Imagined Community. In: Estraikh, Gennady

& Mikhail Krutikov (eds.): The Shtetl: Image and Reality. Papers ofthe Second Mendel Friedman International Conference ofYiddish. Oxford: Legenda (Euro­pean Humanities Research Centre. Studies in Yiddish 2): 4-22.

Ross, Lillian Hammer 1994: Sarah, also Known as Hannah. Illustrated by Helen Cogancherry. Morton Grove, Ill.: Albert Whitrnan.

Schanzer, Rosalyn 2000: Escaping to America. A True Story. New York: Harper­Collins.

Schoeps, Julius H. 2000: Das osteuropäische 'Schtetl.' Lebensumstände, Bräuche und Befindlichkeiten. Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 52 (2): 160-167.

Singer, Isaac Bashevis 1991: Naftali the Storyteller & his Horse, Sus. In: Singer, Isaac Bashevis: Stories for Children. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 167-183.

Tarbescu, Edith 1998: Annushka 's Voyage. Illustrated by Lydia Dabcovich. New Y ork: Clarion Books.

Woodruff, Elvira 1999: The Memory Coat. Illustrated by Michael Dooling. New York: Scholastic.

Zborowski, Mark & Elizabeth Herzog 19675: Life is With the People: The Culture of

the Shtetl. New York: Schocken Books.

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DISPLACEMENT AND IDENTITY.

THE MEMOIRS OF A JUVENILE DEPORTEE UNDER

SOVIET ÜCCUPATION

Violeta Davoliute

In the introduction to a recent conference on the sociology of exile, displace­ment and belonging, Maggie O'Neil and Tony Spybey (2003) speak of how:

[ ... ] war, ethnic cleansing, economic migration, natural disasters and environmental catastrophes have shaped the contours ofwhat has come tobe known as the 'refugee problem' or 'refugee crisis' (6). Indeed, the steady increase in population move­ments across the globe has drawn attention to the various types of migration, includ­ing the specific character of forced migration. For Stephen Castles, "forced migra­tion - including refugee flows, asylum seekers, intemal displacement and develop­ment-induced displacement - has increased considerably in volume and political significance since the end ofthe Cold War (13).

Of course, forced migrationwas not bom with the collapse of the Soviet Un­ion, and the study of earlier manifestations could prove instructive in address­ing current concems. The forcible displacement of entire populations that took place in the Soviet Union is an important historical case of forced migration, though it is not always recognized or remernbered as such. Beginning with the forced exile of Poles in 1934 from their historic homelands in Belarus and Ukraine to Kazakhstan, the policy of forcibly transferring "disloyal" or "trou­blesome" ethnic populations intensified greatly with the transfer of Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians in 1940-1941, Germans in 1941, Chechens in 1945 and Crimean Tatars in 1945. Mostofthose displaced were settled into a system of work camps known as the Gulag ( Glavnoe upravlenie ispravitelno-trudovykh lagerei), notorious in the West even during Soviet times thanks to the heroic efforts of such Russian writers such as Alex­ander Solzhenitsyn.

Russians suffered by the tens of millions in the Stalinist Gulag, but the or­deal of the non-Russian inmates was somewhat different, in that it took on many of the cross-cultural dimensions we now associate with the plight of the refugee. While it would be grossly inaccurate to call the victims of Stalinist population transfers "asylum seekers," their experience of forced migration is in many ways analogous, and thus a comparison of the two may be instruc­tive. Individual and collective identity, cultural and moral values, and attitudes towards the horneland - all suffered profound changes as the displaced per­sons and communities struggled to adapt to the new host environment, to a

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different society and culture, under the most difficult of circumstances. The effects of migration upon identity became only more apparent as these dis­placed persons gradually made their way back to their respective homelands in the post-Stalin period; for some, like the Crimean Tatars, only after the col­lapse of the Soviet Union. The experience of exile and return, in most cases, fostered a strong and rather rigid sense of national identity. In the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, for example, the repatriated deportees were among the most resolute anti-Soviet dissidents who formed the core of the na­tionalist popular movements of the late 1980s.

Indeed, the publication of banned deportee memoirs, possible only under conditions of glasnost', contributed to the resurgence of "collective memory" that fueled a genuinely popular movement that led to the collapse of the So­viet Union. 1 The mass recollection of trauma imbued Lithuanians and other non-Russian peoples with a sense of collective martyrdom, rallied them to re­ject Soviet mle and assert an independent voice. Ironically, such testimonies now appear to hold little interest to the broad public? Given the tasks of mod­ernization and integration into Europe, the affective power of traumatic testi­mony is thought to detract from the demands of "objective" historical research and pragmatic policy development. Invoked from time to time by margina­lized politicians, the testimonies of recent suffering seem scarcely relevant to the current agenda of national consolidation. 3 Deportee memoirs are widely thought to express an irredentist, ethnocentric historical consciousness funda­mentally at odds with the demands of modern, multicultural nationhood.

To make their work more responsive to current needs, scholars of deportee testimony in the Baltics have taken their cue from the more recent approaches to Holocaust testimony, especially those which try to differentiate how the historical traumawas experienced by different groups of people: the particu­larity of women's experience, or the manner in which different "generations"

My ascription of "memory" to a collective refers to the process by which ques­tions of the past are made the focus of public discussion as an integral part of a political strategy that challenges an established political regime. The "counter­narrative" of "authentic" memory is presented as a challenge to the "official his­toriography" supporting the claims to legitimacy of the current regime. Similar processes played out in all ofthe forrner Soviet republics during the late eighties. Ana Donglas and Thomas Vogler (2003) provide an authoritative review of re­cent works in this field in the introduction to their edited volume Witness & Memory: The Discourse of Trauma.

2 JUra A vizienis (2004) charts the sharp decline in publication runs of deportee memoirs in Lithuania since 1994. If a 100,000 copies of Valentinas Gustainis' Be kalties soldout almost immediately upon publication in 1989, the print-run of such memoirs after 1994 has rarely exceeded 2000 copies.

3 A vizienis notes how the International Congress and Public Tribunal to Assess the Crimes of Communism held in Vilnius on June 2000 had little public reso­nance, since "it was perceived as a political ploy by the conservatives to humili­ate the President of Lithuania and disrupt friendly relations between Lithuania and its major trading partner, Russia."

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of the Holocaust experienced and remember the trauma, and how they trans­mit the experience through memory from one generation to the next.4 The fo­cus on the particularity of children's and, by the same token, women's experi­ence promises to re-invigorate and lend new relevance to the study of this Iit­erature by bringing to light stories and experiences that have yet to be fully in­corporated into the received narrative of national oppression. 5 This paper con­tinues along this path by focusing on the example of Dalia Grinkeviciüte, who wrote what is perhaps the best-known Lithuanian testimony to the mass de­portations of the Baltic peoples during WWII. As discussed below, her work retains an enduring significance because it represents the unique experience of a girl whose self-expression embodies the tension between particularist and universalist conceptions of community brought into play by the experience of migration.

Grinkeviciüte's life and work

Born to a middle-class family in Kannas, Dalia Grinkeviciüte's (1927-1987) childhood was brought to an early end by war and deportation. The Nazi­Soviet Pact of 1939 gave the Baltic states to Stalin, who extinguished the short-lived political independence of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The Red Army occupied these states in the summer of 1940, while the NKVD (Soviet secret police, a precursor to the KGB) began to deport potential opposition leaders: politicians, trade unionists, intellectuals, teachers, and wealthy land­owners. All businesses and all but the smallest Iandholdings were nationalized and a growing number of Russian officials and immigrants began to settle in the Baltics. A week before the German invasion, on the night of June 14-15, 1941, Grinkeviciüte, her mother, and brother, along with tens of thousands of Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians, were arrested by the NKVD and loaded onto cattle-cars bound for Siberia. Her father, a member of the conservative party Tautininkai and a former high-ranking official in the independent Lithuanian govemment, was arrested the same night by the Soviet secret po­lice and separated from the family. 6

Grinkeviciüte was destined for Trofimovsk, a virtually uninhabited "set­tlement" in northeastem Siberia. She and her fellow deportees, mostly Lithua­nians, were shipped north by riverboat to the mouth of the Lena River where it flows into the Laptev Sea. With inadequate shelter, miserly rations, and a murderaus work-regime, most inmates died during the first winter. Dalia and

4 The literature on this these topics is enormaus and cannot be summarized here. Fora short, insightful overview of the generational approach to Holocaust mem­oirs, see Suleiman. Fora recent example ofthis new approach to the study of de­portee memoirs see Kirss 2000.

5 Kirss 2004: 14. 6 Juozas Grinkevicius died of starvation in October of 1943 in a prison in the Ural

Mountains.

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her mother survived and managed to relocate further south. In 1949, Dalia's mother was close to death, and the two risked their relative security and re­tumed illegally to Kannas by plane from Y akutsk. They lived in hiding with friends and family, often changing location. Now on the verge of death, Da­lia' s mother asked to go to their former house, even though this increased the risk of discovery. They did, and when Dalia' s mother died, she had no alterna­tive but to bury her in the cellar of their home, again, to avoid detection and arrest. Shortly thereafter she was discovered, retried, sent to prison, and then back into exile.

After Stalin' s death, Grinkeviciüte was released but still forbidden to travel west of the Ural Mountains. In 1954 she startedher medical education in Omsk, and after Khrushchev's anmesty of 1956 was allowed to retum to Lithuania. She obtained a medical degree from Kannas University, and took up a job in the hospital of the small provincial town of Laukuva. Grinkeviciüte was bitter but not broken by the experience of exile and was outspoken in her criticism of the regime. She became an active participant in the Soviet dissi­dent movement, which meant that she was subject to regular police surveil­lance and harassment by the authorities for the rest of her life.

When Dalia had first escaped to her horneland in 1949, she wrote a mem­oir of her ordeal. Shortly before she was caught and sent back into exile, she sealed the manuscript in a glass jar and buried it in the garden of her former home in Kannas. When she retumed to Lithuania in 1956, she was unable to retrieve her memoirs, and so wrote a second version in 1976. This text, written in Russian, was published in 1979 by the underground Moscow-basedjournal Pamiat'. lt was further circulated through the underground dissident publish­ing network known as samizdat, and was eventually smuggled abroad and published in French and English. Some time in the early eighties, Grinkevici­üte rewrote the 1976 version in Lithuanian.

Since she was prominent in the independence movement during the late eighties, Grinkeviciüte's life and testimony made a sensation when her 1949-50 memoirs were discovered in 1991; shortly after her death and the year Lithuania regained its independence. The manuscript, composed of dozens of individual sheets of paper, had badly decomposed, and it took several re­searchers at the War Museum in Kannastorestore the manuscript to a legible state and decipher the contents. This early testimony was first published in se­rial format from 1996-1997. Grinkeviciüte' s complete works, including her early and mature testimonies, fragments from several notebooks, dialogues, and sketches for short stories were published in a book entitled Lietuviai prie Laptev71.}üros (Lithuanians atthe Laptev Sea) in 1997. 7

7 For the sake of clarity, I will refer to the 1988 (1990 in English translation) pub­lication as Grinkeviciüte's "mature" testimony, and the 1997 (2002 in English translation) as the "early" testimony. Page numbers following citations in Eng­lish refer to the 1990 and 2002 English translations of the "mature" and "early" testimony, respectively. Citations ofthe original Lithuanian are provided in foot-

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DISPLACEMENT AND lDENTITY

Grinkeviciüte's early testimony

Grinkeviciüte' s early testimony is focused on the traumatic experience of de­portation and forced Iabor that provoked a premature "coming of age," a point made in the title given posthumously to the English translation of this work: A Stolen Youth, a Stolen Homeland. In her analysis of childhood testimonies to the Holocaust, Susan Suleiman says that cognitive psychology distinguishes three discrete groups of children who have suffered from a traumatic experi­ence. First, there are those from infancy to around three years of age who were "too young to remember" the events; those from four to ten who are "old enough to remember but too young to understand;" and those from approxi­mately age eleven to fourteen, who are "old enough to understand but too young tobe responsible" (283). At 14 years of age, Dalia was at the cusp of adulthood, which Suleiman defines as the state "where one is both capable of narning one's predicament and responsible for acting on it in some considered way" (283). On the one hand, she possesses the capacity to think hypotheti­cally, to employ abstract concepts to reason and the vocabulary to name her experience, and in this respect differs from pre-adolescent children. On the o­ther hand, she is still far from fully formed as an individual, and her memoirs reflect an intensely thoughtful period of coming to terms with a tmly bewil­dering experience.

Perhaps it is precisely because of the mdimentary nature of the concepts at Grinkeviciüte's disposal that the early testimony contrasts so sharply with the standard hagiographic representations found in other deportee memoirs of the Lithuanian deportee as a "saint" devoid of "base" human characteristics, and disturbs the normative view of the deportees as a homogenaus group of Lithuanians (Avizienis). 8 The majority of deportee testimonies draw a sharp line between the representation of deported non-Russian peoples, who are seen as the victims, and the Russian camp administrators, workers, and even prisoners who are explicitly or implicitly blamed for creating and supporting Stalin' s system. In these works, the distinction between the victim and perpe­trator is made along nationallines. Instead, the young Grinkeviciüte's empha­sis is on conveying her personal experience in the greatest possible detail, and events are framed in a quasi-tragic narrative of personal development and coming of age under the direst circumstances. Events are narrated in the first­person singular in the present tense, lending the work an expressive immedi­acy that Iets the reader "re-live" the main stages of the deportation: the jour­ney from Lithuania through Russia to Trofimovsk, the terrible first winter, and work at the fish factory during the summer.

notes, with page numbers referring to the 1997 publication of Grinkeviciüte's complete works.

8 A vizienis 2004.

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As Dalia and her fellow deportees are taken away from Kannas in a trans­poft train, she writes of her impressions as she and her compatriots were taken by train from her home town Kannas:

"I feel I shall never see all of this again," said my mother. Her words were like a knife piercing my brain. A fight for life is beginning, Dalia. School, your childhood, fun, jokes, theatre and friends: all these things now belang to the past. You are a grown-up already. You are fourteen. You have to look after your mother and take the place ofyour father. The first part ofyour fight for life is starting (14). 9

At the last stop before the train crosses Lithuania's border, Dalia saw another train full of men. She got out of the car and walked along the other train, ask­ing if anyone had seen her father. After she returned to the car with her mother, she thinks: "I wanted to and could have mn away, but I realized im­mediately that I had a helpless mother to take care of. I felt as if I were 20 years old" (15).

After several days oftravel, the deportees arrived in eastem Siberia, where they spent some time before being shipped by riverboat down the Lena river to Trofimovsk in the Far North. Living conditions here were quite good, and at this time the Lithuanian deportees are seen united in their Ionging for their homeland, the memory ofwhich remained very close. Here, Dalia draws upon their shared folklore and traditions to represent the strength of their commu­nity.

Living in the forest, we used to gather wood to keep the fires going till the moming. Old and young people sat tagether araund them. A huge area was covered with the dots of glimmering fires, araund which thousands of Lithuanians tried to drown their sorrows in song. [ ... ] The songs united us, gave us strength, and seemed to warn us that we would still have lots to endure; but the children of Lithuania had to survive. For a moment the songs brought us closer to our homeland, encouraging us not to lose hope of retuming (22 ).

Although Grinkeviciüte clearly identifies with her fellow Lithuanian deportees in terms of a common Ionging for home, she shows how precarious national solidarity can be once conditions become desperate. As their common ordeal continues, Grinkeviciüte expresses her disillusionment in highly critical por­traits that break down the categories of class and nation to which the deportee community still clings. She ridicules the attempt of some deportees to main­tain bourgeois standards of culture and to maintain their former status in exile: "Madame Zukiene, dressed in long Japanese silk mantel, is swishing along the deck of the barge like some noblewoman. Even at the most critical times she does not forget her manicure and massage to preserve the skinon her face.

9 "Prasideda gyvenimo kova, Dalia. Gimnazija, vaikyste, isdykavimai, fokusai, teatras ir drauges- praeityje. Tu jau suaugusi. Tau jau suejo keturiolika metl!. Tu turi globoti motinq, pavaduoti jai tevq. Prasideda pirrnas mano gyvenimo kovos aktas" (36-37).

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She looks down upon everyone because she was the wife of a colonel."10

Later, step-by-step, Grinkeviciüte shows how Lithuanians begin to steal food from each other, how a pious Catholic steals and then prays, how a "devoted husband" urges his wife not to give up hope for survival and then eats her bread when she is not looking.

Given the extreme conditions suffered by the deportees, Grinkeviciüte' s harsh critique of her compatriots' behavior seems excessive; however, the real object of her contempt is not human weakness but hypocrisy and bad faith. This becomes clearer in passages describing sexual relations between Lithua­nian women inmates and Russian administrators and workers. Although she herself was still a teenager and not yet in the "market," Dalia witnesses a range of sexual encounters, and is indirectly drawn into discussions. Grinke­viciüte judges their "shameful" conduct as acceptable under the circum­stances: "There's no cause tobe indignant. Each of those women was saving her life the only way she could. They could not be accused of depravity be­cause all their instincts had already atrophied from hunger. And even if they enjoyed what they were doing, there was nothing wrong with that. Human life is short, and it is only normal to do what nature demands." 11 Indeed, Dalia re­serves her criticism for the hypocrisy of the moralists:

I am sitting on my bunk and pretending that I am sleeping because I am watehing how Stariene is flirting with a soldier. This woman is very pious or at least wants to create such an impression, a big patriot. If some child somewhere leams a Russian song and starts singing it, she smiles ironically and reproaches the parents. Mean­while she is making out with Russians and Chekists [ secret police agents who ran the Gulag] [ ... ]. She smiles to a Russian and he pushes her down and makes out with her. When she talks about her husband Bronius who is in the camps, it seems that real tears are running from her blue eyes. The Jesuit! 12

Grinkeviciüte' s early testimony presents life in the north as a trial, a test of strength, will, and principle that all deportees must face. Her account is very judgmental, dividing deportees among the fallen, whom she despises, and the heroic, whom she strives to emulate. The primacy of ethical action is pre-

10 "Ponia Zukiene su japonisku, ilgu raudono silko apsiaustu tarsi kilminga didike slama po barzos deni. Ji net kritiskiausiomis minutemis nepamirsta manikiuro, masazo veido odai islaikyti. 1 visus ziuri is auksto, kadangi ji buvo pulkininko zmona" (52).

11 "Piktintis nera ko. Kiekviena daro daro taip, kaip nori, gelbsti gyvyb~t kaip kas gali. IStvirkimu apkaltinti negalima, nes temperamento liaukos nuo bado atrofav~tsi. 0 jeigu ir taip, argi baisu, zmogaus gyvenimas trumpas, ir tai visai natüralu, jei pati gamta liepia" (99).

12 "Sedziu savo guolyje ir apsimetu, kad miegu, nes stebiu, kaip Stariene flirtuoja su kareiviu. Tai labai pamaldi moteris, ar bent stengiasi tokia atrodyti, didele patriote. Jeigu kuris vaikas kur uzgird~ts uzdainuoja rusiskq dainq, ji pajuokiamai sypsosi ir iskalba tevams, o su cekistais ir rusais tai lardosi [ ... ] Sypsosi rusui, o tas jq vercia ir glamoneja. Kai ji kalba apie savo Bronilb kuris lageriuose, tai, rodos, tikros asaros rieda jai is melynl! akil!. Jezuite" (51).

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sented as a lesson which she has leamed in the camps, and which forces a re­vision of the prejudices of her childhood. If the plight of the women has forced her to revise earlier notions of sexual morality, the heroism of the doc­tor Samodurov forces Grinkeviciüte to rethink her concept of beauty. Grinke­viciüte describes her initial impression of doctor Samodurov in racial stereo­types: she calls him "bowlegged" with a "typically Jewish nose." The young Grinkeviciüte contrasts Samodurov to Borisas Charasas, a handsome Jewish boy who lost an arm to frostbite due to the cmel punishment for stealing some bread. However, when Dalia sees Borisas smiling and ingratiating hirnself with the man responsible for his punishment, she is repelled, and wonders how can he help but spit in the face of his oppressor: "Borisas did not look so handsome to me anymore. He's just a disgusting brownnoser, a human being who does not respect himself, who humiliates hirnself before the others, and deserves only pity and antipathy, in my opinion." 13 This extremely harsh criti­cism of Borisas is developed into a reflection on the relationship of beauty and goodness, in which the bowlegged Samodurov comesout looking much bet­ter: "The beauty of Apollo, devoid of any spiritual qualities, was repellent [ ... ]. Borisas was a plain failure. Samodurov, who in the opinion of the majority was a monster because of his abnormally huge and distorted figure, seemed handsome to me because he was very humane." 14

In her early testimony, Grinkeviciüte romanticizes her own ethical strengthin living to tell the tmth, no matter what punishment is threatened. In a detailed narrative of how she was put on trial for stealing wood, she makes it clear that she stands apart from most prisoners. She, along with five Lithuani­ans, is on trial for stealing boards from the storehouse. Stealing firewood was the only way to heat their barracks, to dry out their clothing and bring a brief, inadequate respite from the deadly cold. All prisoners stole constantly as a matter of smvival and the response from the authorities was harsh punish­ment. In line with the "camp mentality," all the defendants denied having sto­len: "[ ... ] the whole brigade lies. The Soviet Unionlied and willlie forever. They stole, they steal, and they will steal. All four detainees protest their inno­cence. Behind me I hear an approving mmble from the crowd. Soon it will be my tum." 15 At this point the narrative flashes back, to when Grinkeviciüte stole the boards, fired up the stove, and made some tea for her dying mother. When the guards entered the barracks and asked who stole the boards,

13 "Borisas man jau nera grazus. Jis tik slykstus padlaizys. Zmogus, kuris negerbia sav~ts, büdamas teisus zeminasi pries nieksq, yra tik pasigailejimo ir pasislykstejimo vertas" (114).

14 "[ ... ] neidvasintas, apoloniskas grozis man slykstus. [ ... ] Borisas Charasas man negrazus, nevyk~ts jaunuolis. Samodurovas, kuris, daugumos nuomone, yra pabaisa del nenormaliai dideles kreivos figuros, man grazus, nes jis humaniskas"( 114 ).

15 "[ ... ] meluoja visa brigada, melavo ir meluos per amzius visa Tarybl! Sqjunga, voge, vagia ir vogs. Visi keturi uzsigyne. Uz sav~ts girdziu pritarianti minios surmuli. Tuoj mano eile" (74).

102

DISPLACEMENT AND lDENTITY

Grinkeviciüte immediately confessed. Now, facing the judge's questioning, Grinkeviciüte again proclaims that she stole the boards. The climax of the scene is when the judge asks if she is not ashamed to be sitting on the bench of the accused: "I feel everyone' s curious eyes boring into me. Is she ashamed? Ashamed? Because I gave water to my dying mother? [ ... ] You want to see repentance in my eyes? Shame? You should be ashamed, you murderers, not me." 16 The four accused who denied their guilt are sentenced to two years, while Grinkeviciüte is found not guilty on the basis of her age and confession. Grinkeviciüte represents herself as having emerged with her dignity intact: she may have stolen to secure resources to survive, but she never debased herselfby compromising her higher ideals.

The moral dilemmas involved in surviving under an unjust and murderaus regime are expressed in an extreme form in Grinkeviciüte' s overall positive appraisal of two female tramps, Lidia Vorobyova and Yulia Yudina. These two Russian women were caught up in the Gulag by chance and are seen by Dalia as utterly degraded, and yet somehow fascinating: "They were creatures whose sex and age were very hard to determine. They were extremely shabby. Gorky' s tramps would have looked like lords in comparison with those two women" (164). Vorobyova and Yudina represent an extreme form of Soviet mentality: stealing openly, procrastinating, and ignoring authority. Vorobyova refuses to work, dresses in rags, and sleeps all day. She responds to the threats of the administrator by emptying her bowels in front of his office. Expressing their philosophy of survival, Yudina claims: "Here, stealing is a matter of honor, nobility and heroism. And a necessity, if you don't want to croak."17

For Grinkeviciüte, these women embody the tme principle upon which the Soviet system worked: "As I leamed later, almost all Soviet citizens share this psychology, only their ways of stealing are different. They all steal, grab and use whoever gets a chance to get a hold of something." 18 The lack of shame demonstrated by the "tramps" seems to repulse and fascinate Grinkeviciüte at the same time. On the whole, her portrayal of Yudina is sympathetic, if not positive, insofar as she is "living the truth" of the Soviet system. Dalia's mixed feeling towards their behavior reflects her process of adaptation and simultaneaus resistance to the demands of living under the brutal Soviet sys­tem.

16 "Jauciu, kad visi ismeige i mane sma1sias akis, idemiai stebi. Ar man geda? Geda? Ar del to, kad mirstanciai motinai vandens padaviau? JUs ziurit i mane, sotüs Mavrinai, Sventickai ir Travkinai, norit pamatyti atgai1::t mano akyse? Geda? Jums geda, zmogzudziai, o ne man! Girdziu kartojant k1ausimq. 'Ne, man visiskai negeda'" (79).

17 "Vogimas pas mus yra garbes, s1oves ir herojiskumo reika1as [ ... ] . Bütinybe, jei nenori dvesti" (153).

18 "Kaip paskui isitikinau, kone visl! tarybinil! zmonil! sitokia psicho1ogija, skiriasi tik g1emzirno büdai. Vagia, dziauna, naudojasi visi, kas kur ir kaip prieina" (153).

103

VIOLETADAVIOLUTE

The memoir ends shortly after a scene that could be interpreted as the en­actment of Dalia's self-assertive adaptation to the demands of her environ­ment. Dalia and Maryte, a 15-year-old girl, were working in a group of Finns and Lithuanians collecting logs from the riverbank and placing them into piles. They were paid by volume, so the crew as a whole was working at a pace that neither Dalia nor Maryte could sustain: "We were not old enough for such hard work. We did not want to eat, we felt sick, and we flopped down to our beds immediately. I started wondering what we should do to avoid the pain. Life and hard work made me think" (172).

Dalia assumes a leadership role, telling Maryte that she has figured out a way for them to survive, provided Maryte follows Dalia's orders: "I am the head of the team. lt is my duty to deliver the work, and it will be I who de­cides when we have to work and when we can rest. If you want to work with me and not with them, be so kind, please, as to do what I say" (173). Here Da­lia's actions reflect the influence of the Yudina and Vorobyova's philosophy. She explains to Maryte how and why they should cheat, building hollow piles of logs and deceiving their supervisor.

I explained to her that we should not work too hard, that work never made anyone rich, it only made him grow a hump, that I did not want to give my youthful strength to the state as a present, that we were both still going to need our strength, and that the govermnent had already robbed us of everything. They had robbed us of our youth and our homes, they had tumed us into slaves, and had pushed us into the dirt. If we had to work, after all, it was better to work with the head and not with the hands. Shocked by the audacity of my reasoning, Maryte stared atme with her sur­prised, wide open eyes. Once during my long oration she even burst out crying (173).

Dalia' s lecture to Maryte shows how she has adapted to the culture of the camps.

By the end of the memoir, under the sheer pressure of the brutal daily re­gime, Dalia' s memory of her horneland had become extremely faint. After the brief reprieve of the polar summer, when "for two days we could even take off our quilted jackets" the winter winds again began to blow, signaling the onset of another brutal, deadly winter: "Our yurt was very close to the water' s edge. Foaming waves would roll right up to our doorstep: the sound of the sea would send us to sleep, the sound of the sea would wake us up." With this evocation of her remote location in the wild north, Dalia comments: "Not even for a minnte could we forget where we were. Lithuania seemed to be only a dream, created by our imaginations. We would talk about it as if we ourselves could not believe any more that the country existed and that we had ever lived there" (176). In such primitive conditions of survival existence, Da­lia began to equate the notion of "homeland" with that of civilization and cul­ture. In the very last scene of the book, the sound of "Swan Lake" playing on a radio was the first music that she had heard since the beginning of her or­deal. Just to hear this music provoked an outburst of emotion and memory of her homeland.

104

DISPLACEMENT AND IDENTITY

Grinkeviciüte's mature testimony

Grinkeviciüte' s mature testimony reflects her development into a committed dissident. Unlike the early testimony, with its expressive and romanticized narrative, the mature testimony is focused on making concise judgments about the nature of the regime, marshalling historical events as evidence of its criminality. lt is much shorter and less expressive than the early version: the same events are retold in summary, analytical form, with precise dates and po­litical context. Grinkeviciüte recounts her experience in the historical past this time, and dramatizes very little, only occasionally switching to narrating in the present tense to convey her immediate impressions of the time. 19

This forensie style of Grinkeviciüte's mature testimony may reflect her self-declared identification with the Decembrists and Narodnaya vol ya (Peo­ple' s Will), a pre-revolutionary Russian terrorist organization. Sulskyte, Grinkeviciüte's friend and roommate, writes that among Grinkeviciüte's fa­vorite books was Sudebniye rechi russkikh yuristov (The Pleadings ofRussian Barristers), and that she cherished the speeches of the pre-revolutionary Rus­sian lawyers Kon', Plevak, and Aleksandrov as much as the classics of litera­ture, if not more. She had memorized the summation of Aleksandrov's de­fense of Vera Zasulich, a People' s Will terrorist, and was especially moved by its closing words: "she may leave this room convicted, but she will not leave it in shame."20 The climax of the mature testimony occurs in the third part, in her reported dialogue with the interrogators at the time of her second arrest:

I refused to sign the verdict. When they asked me why, I answered that the verdict has no legal basis. Exile is a punishment. For committing a crime one can only be exiled by a court. I was exiled as a child without having committed any crime or having any trial, only because I was bom into this family and not some other. There­fore, I do not consider my leaving Yakutsk either an escape or a crime. I do not rec­ognize the verdict. 21

19 In this respect the manner in which the English version renders the early testi­mony in the historical past tense is completely unacceptable. It robs the work of its immediacy, and evens out the young Grinkeviciüte's choppy, hard-hitting syntax. This editorial decision may reflect a certain anxiety with respect to the emotional impact of the work, particularly those sections which do not portray the deportees in heroic terms. The historical past tense de-fictionalizes the work in the sense of minimizing the dramatic mode. Intentional or not, it focuses the reader's attention on the events reported, rather than the perspective of the au­thor.

20 "ona mozet otsyuda viyti osuzhdyonnoju, no ona ne viydet opozorennoyu" ( quoted in Sulskyte 1995: 125).

21 "Po nuosprendzio pasirasyti atsisakiau. 1 klausim::t- kodel? - atsakiau, kad sis nuosprendis neturi jokio juridinio pagrindo. IStremimas yra bausme. IStremti gali tik teismas uz nusikaltimq. Mane istreme vaik::t be jokios kaltes ir teismo, vien del to, kad gimiau toj, o ne kitoj seimoj. Todel ir isvykimo is Jakutijos nelaikau nei pabegimu, nei nusikaltimu. Nuosprendzio nepripazistu" (187).

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VIOLETADAVIOLUTE

This passage expresses Grinkeviciüte's self-identification as a dissident and outspoken critic of the regime. Given the limited sphere of criticism allowed by the more liberal regime in the sixties and seventies, the dissidents focused on questions of individual morality, honor and dignity, and resistance to the degradation of the Soviet citizen. Dissent was expressed in a legal vocabulary that sought to unmask the bad faith on which actual policy decisions were based. Written in the typical style ofthe dissident text, Grinkeviciüte's mature testimony is ostentatiously directed as an accusation against the Soviet re­gime.

As noted above, Grinkeviciüte' s mature testimony was written in Russian and first published in Moscow for a Soviet-wide audience. lt could be de­scribed as "politically correct": though devastating in her criticism of the camp regime and of the secret police, she carefully avoids any suggestion that "Russians" are to bear collective responsibility for the suffering of her compa­triots. Indeed, "Russians" are not mentioned at all, only "Chekists" and the "NKVD." The only time someone is identified by ethnicity is when she again testifies to the heroism of Samodurov. Grinkeviciüte does not explicitly iden­tify him as a Jew, but takes care to mention his patronymic, Solomonovich, on two occasions, which clearly identifies him as Jewish. His courage and self­sacrifice are amplified, moreover, by a report that he was killed at the front during the war. Grinkeviciüte's sense of community with the dissidents is ex­pressed by her description of all the "wonderful intellectual people" she met in prison: "lt seemed that Stalin had locked up the country' s mind, its honor, and its conscience here. Scientists, film and theater actors, lecturers, doctors, stu­dents and others were jailed here."22 Categorical in her condenmation of the Soviet system and specific individuals, Grinkeviciüte shows how Russians too have suffered, and takes care to avoid any suggestion that Russians as a whole bear any form of collective guilt.

The mature testimony is also, at first glance, focused on events witnessed and experienced by Grinkeviciüte the individual. However, unlike the early testimony, which tends at times to romanticize Grinkeviciüte's individual conduct and experience, the mature testimony is focused on a collective narra­tive of deportation as a catastrophic exile threatening the Lithuanian nation as a whole. In her account of how Lithuanian teachers were singled out for pun­ishment by the regime, Grinkeviciüte calls them the "educators of the nation," and represents them as carriers of culture and of the nation' s historical mem­ory: "From them children learned about Lithuania's heroic past, about their forefathers who for hundreds of years protected Lithuania from conquerors from the East and from the West. They taught children to love their native tongue, one of the oldest languages in the world, which had been forbidden by the Tsar for four decades."23 By referring to how Lithuanians suffered under

22 "Atrode, kad Stalinas cia uzdare salies protq, garbtt ir SqZintt. Kalejo mokslininkai, kino ir teatro aktoriai, destytojai, gydytojai, studentai ir kt (188).

23 "IS jl! vaikai suzinodavo apie didvyrisk::t Lietuvos praeiti, apie protevius, kurie simtmeciais gyne Tevyn~t nuo uzkariautojl! is Rytl! ir is Vakafl!. Jie moke vaikus

106

DISPLACEMENT AND IDENTITY

the Tsarist Empire, the time frame of Grinkeviciüte's testimony suddenly stretches back for hundreds of years. By evoking the memory of past Oppres­sion, her narrative of modern oppression taps into the ancient, mythological history of the nation: "They were the first to tell children ab out the revolts of 1831 and 1863 which were bmtally suppressed, after which entire villages were exiled to Siberia."24 The commonality of fate between Grinkeviciüte's generation and prior generations of Lithuanian exiles brings the collective di­mension ofthe experience to the fore.

Moreover, the constant reference to graves and burial in Grinkeviciüte' s mature testimony evokes of her sense of kinship, nationhood, and territorial belonging. Katherine Verdery shows how the ideological vacuum left in the wake of the collapse of socialism has been filled by a renewed sense of com­munity based on a religious association of kinship and territory, reinforced by what she calls the "politics of dead bodies." Throughout Eastern Europe, the remains of persons persecuted by the communist regimes have been disin­terred and reburied with elaborate ceremony as a means of "giving new con­tours to the past through revising genealogies and rewriting history" (40). Classifying modern nationalism as a derivation of kinship and religion, she traces its origins to the practices of ancestor worship in traditional societies: "Ancestors were buried in the soil around the dwelling; their presence conse­crated that soil, and continuous rituals connecting them with their heirs cre­ated a single community consisting of the dead, their heirs and the soil they shared" (104). For Verdery, the ancient notion of kinship as being rooted in particular soils is the basis for nationalist political movements. Likewise, in Grinkeviciüte' s mature testimony, the peiVasive reference to and description of burials invoke an apocalyptic perspective on the deportation, establishing a spiritual bond between the nation and its territory.

Part One of this testimony is highly commemorative, elegiac and, for ex­tended passages, the names of individuals and families who perished are sim­ply listed with no narration or explanation, creating the sense that we are read­ing a series of epitaphs. Indeed, Grinkeviciüte presents her testimony as the only gravestone that most victims of the deportationwill ever have: "I breathe easier knowing that I- as much as my strength, intelligence and abilities al­lowed me - built a kind of monument for the victims of the North. The world leamed about the thousands of nameless victims of torture buried in the icy graves. This cannot be destroyed or erased. It is now history. It is also a monument for my parents."25 The presentation of her testimony as a monu-

my 1eti gimtqjq ka1bq, vienq seniausil! pasaulio ka1bl!, kuri keturis desimtmecius buvo caro draudziama" (177).

24 "Jie pirmieji pasakojo vaikams apie ziauriai numa1sintus 1831 ir 1863 metl! sukilimus, po kuril! istisi kaimai buvo istremti i Sibir::t" (177).

25 "Man 1abai 1engva kvepuoti nuo minties, kad as, kiek 1eido mano jegos, protas, sugebejimai, pastaciau sioki toki pamink1::t Siaures aukoms, pasaulis suzinojo apie tükstancius bevardzil! kankinil! broliskuose 1ediniuose kapuose. To

107

VIOLETADAVIOLUTE

ment is no mere rhetorical flourish. lt literally stands in for the lack of a proper burial for her compatriots, who died in Trofimovsk without a trace: "In 1949, when they took the last of the exiles to other places to fish, the waves had already begun to destroy the edge of the common grave and it had started to cmmble. lt is absolutely certain that the waves have long since washed away all the corpses."26 Siberia is a land of forgetting, because even those cemeteries created are destroyed by the shifting course of the river Lena.

At times, the testimony reads like an ethnographic account of burial prac­tices in the Gulag, detailed yet concise, and objective in tone:

The corpse bearers themselves were starved and weak; therefore they would tie a rope to the corpse's feet and tagether drag it out ofthe barrack. They would then put the dead on sleds, and hamessing themselves into the ropes pull them several hun­dred meters beyond the barracks. There they would unload the corpses into a com­mon pile. The dead people's hair would remain frozen to the barrack walls27

Improper burial is presented not only as undignified for the dead, but as a tor­tuous and harmful process for the living as well.

The extensive description of improper burials is juxtaposed to the princi­pal event ofPart Two, namely the burial of Grinkeviciüte's mother in the cel­lar of their former home in Kannas. The contrast between the brutal, anony­maus deaths in the Gulag and this different death is conveyed in detail: "She lies laid out among flowers. Her face is peaceful and blissful. The end of her suffering has come. I open the window so the soft Lithuanian breeze can stroke her face for the last time [ ... ]. Your greatest final wish has been ful­filled. You died in Lithuania, and your native land will shelter you."28 Part One ends with Grinkeviciüte's evocation of the ghosts of Trofimovsk that wauder endlessly searching for the road to their homeland. In Part Two, Grinkeviciüte shows us a proper burial, the main characteristic of which is the territory in which it takes place. By burying her mother, not only in her horne­land, but in the cellar of her former home, Grinkeviciüte evokes powerful as­sociations between death, burial, kinship, and territorial belonging. She en­trenches her individual and collective sense of belanging to the territory of

nebegalima nei sunaikinti, nei istrinti. Tai istorija. Tai paminklas ir mano Tevams" (5).

26 "Kai 1949 m. paskutinius tremtinius isveze zvejoti i kitas vietas, bangos jau pradejo griauti brolisko kapo krastq, ir jis eme irti. Nera jokios abejones, kad visus 1avonus bangos seniai isp1ove" (178).

27 "Patys veziotojai buvo 1abai isbadej~t ir nusi1p~t, todel pririsdavo pie 1avonl! kojl! virvtt ir bendromis jegomis traukdavo is barako. Paskui mirusiuosiu dedavo ant rogil! ir, isikinktt i virves, vezdavo ke1et::t simil! metfl! toliau nuo barako. Ten 1avonus isversdavo i bendr::t krtivq. Sienl! 1eduose 1ikdavo prisa1tt mirusi~l! p1aukai" (170).

28 "Guli ji 1ovoje pasarvota tarp gelil!. 0 veide - pa1airna ir ramybe. Ga1as kancioms. Atidarau 1angq. Tegu1 Lietuvos vejelis paskutini kart::t pag1osto jos veidq. [ ... ] ISsipi1de tavo didziausias paskutinis noras. Tu numirei Lietuvoj. Tave prig1aus gimtoji zeme" (183).

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DISPLACEMENT AND lDENTITY

Lithuania through the burial of her mother in Kannas, and contrasts this proper burial with the improper burials of her compatriots in a foreign, inhos­pitable land. The spiritual dimension of this contrast is apparent in that those who died in Trofimovsk are represented as ghosts, cursed to wauder forever in search of their homeland.

From this perspective, the deportation as a whole is portrayed as a catas­trophe. The collective loss of horneland is dramatized by this improper burial of the deportees in a foreign land where they leave no trace or tangible pres­ence for their descendants to see and remember. The travesty of the senseless suffering and death is compounded by the fact that nobody will commemorate their death. Grinkeviciüte's discourse of collective memory seeks to com­memorate the dead and thus resist the tide of forgetting. In burying her mother, Grinkeviciüte enacts a ritual of profound significance on a biographi­cal, national, and religious level. Burial is a core ritual of kinship, expressive of community based on common descent. The sense ofwhat constitutes a pro­per burial is profoundly communal, and touches the core of what makes for a community in a traditional sense.

In view of Verdery's argument, the focus on burial, commemoration, and kinship in Grinkeviciüte' s mature work could support a nationalist interpreta­tion of her testimony. However, having witnessed the perversion of socialist ideals and the collapse of ethnic solidarity in the face of extreme oppression and deprivation, Grinkeviciüte's testimony also reflects a cautious, anti-heroic stance towards notions of collective identity and belonging. In this respect, Grinkeviciüte's testimony supports the argument of Edith Wyschogrod, for whom the cataclysms of the twentieth century have resulted in a displacement, not the reinforcement, of territoriality as the foundation of identity in the myth of autochthony, whereby the nation is understood to have been bom from the earth. Wyschogrod (1998: 220) writes: "the idea of place persists, but locales have become sites of mourning, not of life but of death. Burial places are the fragments of vast memory palaces, reminders less of the events awaiting his­torical remembering, than of the historian's responsibility to remember". She argues that this displacement of autochthony establishes the possibility of nar­ratives of collective memory that are not exclusive, but inclusive of othemess, based on claims of ethical citizenship, rather than kinship and territoriality. While the narrative of autochthony "must be heroic history [ ... ] an incessant remythologization ofthe divine origin [ofthe community from the land]," she insists that the "reverse autochthony of burial places cannot generate such a recalling [ ... ]. Tospeak from the burial place is to inhabit a terrain that is not a terrain, an exteriority that is the non-place of ethics, the 'space' of authoriza­tion of historical narrative" (225).

Even in death, Grinkeviciüte' s sense of ethical community transcends na­tional boundaries. A third cemetery appears in Part Three, as Grinkeviciüte commemorates the death of prisoners summarily executed in a prison in the Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) region:

109

VIOLETADAVIOLUTE

One of my favorite places in the prison zone was a comer where beautifulluxuriant grass grew like nowhere else. Here it was quiet and peaceful and birds alighted sometimes. I was amazed at why the grass was so lovely here. Then an old prisoner explained to me that between 1941 and 1945 this plot had not yet been prison terri­tory, and prisoners who had been shot or killed were buried here. 29

Her reverence for this territory ("This place - each blade of grass, each flower - appeared holy to me [ .. .].")30 is set in the context of her discovery of the "wonderful community" of dissidents of all nationalities, and follows a hagio­graphic description ofthe Muscovite Boris Vorobjov, a dissident who lost his eye during hisbrutal interrogation but nevertheless refused to bear false wit­ness to incriminate his colleagues, an act of martyrdom that testifies, among other things, to the fact that Russians too were victims of the Soviet regime.

Conclusion

In the early testimony, the young Grinkeviciüte stmggles to make sense of a bewildering experience that forces to accept responsibility and act in a role beyond her years. Not surprisingly, the narrative is stmctured on a "coming of age" motif and highlights the difficult choices involved in adapting to the de­mands of an exceptionally harsh regime. Her preconceptions concerning na­tion and class are steadily broken down by her analysis of everyday events. The harsh conditions of life in the camps is portrayed as a trial which levels all differences except formoral rectitude.

In the mature testimony, the politically mature dissident writer still high­lights the importance of moral integrity, but takes care to articulate the hero­ism of others more than her own. In addressing questions of ethnic and cul­tural difference, she now has the tools to articulate a dialectical internationalist perspective: she shows how people who stand up to the Soviet system are honorable, but does not fail to testify passionately to the specific, collective claims of the Lithuanian nation. Grinkeviciüte's work offers enough material to support a wide variety of interpretations: as the testimony of ethnic com­munity, based on ties of kinship, and as the testimony of an ethical commu­nity, founded on ties of citizenship. While the first envisages common descent as the basis for belonging, the second envisages community as the reciprocity of legal and ethical obligation. The continuities between the early with the mature testimonies show the evolution of Grinkeviciüte' s ethical develop-

29 "Lagerio zonos pakrastyje buvo viena mano labai megstama vieta - nedidelis plotelis, kuriame kaip niekur kitur augo nepaprastai vesli ir grazi zole. Cia ir paukscil! kartais atskrisdavo, buvo tylu ir ramu. Mane stebino, kodel cia tokia grazi zole. Vierras senas kalinys kartq man paaiskino, kad 1941-1945 m. cia buvo dar ne lagerio teritorija ir toje vietoje buvo laidojami mirtt, susaudyti ir nusauti kaliniai" (188).

30 "Si vieta- kiekviena zolyte, kiekviena gelyte- man atrode sventa [ ... ]"

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DISPLACEMENT AND IDENTITY

ment, and yet the differences in accent and form reveal the particularity of a child's experience.

Referencies

Avizienis, JUra 2004: Peiforming Identity: Lithuanian Memoirs of Siberian Depor­tation and Exile. Manuscript.

Bumblauskas, Alfredas 2002: The heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: Per­spectives of historical consciousness. In: Potasenko, Grigorijus (ed.): The Peo­ples ofthe Grand Duchy ofLithuania. Vilnius: Aidai: 7-44.

Castles, Stephen 2003: Towards a sociology of forced migration and social trans­formation. Sociology 37 (1 ): 13-34.

Douglas, Ana & Thomas A. Vogler 2003: Witness and Memory: The Discourse of Trauma. New York & London: Routledge.

Grinkeviciüte, Dalia 1988: Lietuviai prie Laptevl!jl1ros. PergaZe 8: 151-165. Grinkeviciüte, Dalia 1990: Lithuanians by the Laptev Sea. The Siberian memoirs of

Dalia Grinkeviciüte. Lituanus 36 (4): 37-67. Grinkeviciüte, Dalia 1997: Lietuviai prie Laptevl{ jiiros. Vilnius: Lietuvos Rasytojl!

Sqjungos Leidykla. Grinkeviciüte, Dalia 2002: A Stolen Youth, a Stolen Homeland. Translated by Izolda

Geniusiene. Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers' Union Publishers. Kirss, Tina, Ene Karesaar & Marju Lauristirr ( eds.) 2004: She Who Remembers, Sur­

vives: Interpreting Estonian Women 's Post-Soviet Life Stories. Tartu: Tartu UP. O'Neil, Maggie & Tony Spybey 2003: Global refugees, exile, displacement and be­

longing. Sociology 37 (1 ): 7-12. O'Neill, Maggie & Bea Tobolewska 2002: Renewing methodologies for socio­

cultural research: Global refugees, ethno-mimesis and the transformative role of art. In: Rugg, Judith & David Hinchcliffe ( eds. ): Recoveries and Reclamations: Advances in Art and Urban Futures, vol. 2. Bristol & Portland: Intellect Books: 141-55.

Suleiman, Susan 2002: The 1.5 generation: Thinking about child survivors and the Holocaust. American Imago: Studies in Psychoanalysis and Culture 59 (3): 277-95.

Sulskyte, Aldona 1995: Daktare Dalyte. Metai 95 (May): 212-240. Verdery, Katherirre 1999: The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Post­

socialist Change. New York: Columbia UP. Wyschogrod, Edith 1998: An Ethics of Remembering: History, Heterology, and the

Nameless Others. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

111

CHILDREN MAKING MEDIA. CONSTRUCTIONS OF HOME

AND BELONGING

Nadina Christopoulou and Sonja de Leeuw

What breaks first in the process of migration is the family, nuclear or ex­tended. How children see themselves positioned within family relationships is a key theme in the lives of children in the process of migration and settlement. This has been one of the central themes of a European research project on Children in Communication about Migration (CHICAM). 1 The project aimed to explore and develop the potential uses of media and communication tech­nologies as means of empowering these children and enabling them to realize their potential. The research was carried out in six European countries: Ger­many, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Sweden, and the Netherlands. CHICAM was conceived as a form of action research, combining ethnography and analysis based upon social and cultural theory. Media clubs were established in each country accommodating children in making visual representations of their lives and their experiences in their new locations over a long period of time (one school year) using photography, digital video and intemet.2 The re­search centred on the children and prioritized the children' s view of their lives, farnilies and migration experiences. The children came from very differ­ent countfies and continents: Africa (Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia, Angola, Mo­rocco ), Latin-America (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru), Asia (Iraq, Syria, Turkey Afghanistan) and Europe (Kosovo Albanians). Most farnilies came as refugees or asylum seekers, some other as immigrants under labour migration law.

CHICAM was a three year European research project funded by the European Commission. Theme: Improving Human Resource Potential and the Socio­economic Knowledge Base: New Perspectives for Leaming (Framework 5). It was coordinated by the Institute of Education, Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, University ofLondon. The project began in November 2001; it ended October 2004. See Application to the European Commission, Institute ofEducation, London, 2000. Also: Project Deliverahle ur 1, London, April2002 and CHICAM web site www.chicam.net.

2 Also see Kolar-Panov (1997) on the use of technology and the media (video in particular) in creating links between separated communities and places. The Brit­ish and German partner had previous experience in enabling and researching self-made media production. See Buckingham, Graham & Sefton-Green (1995) and Buckingham (2001) as well as Niesyto (2003).

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What the children said, how they acted and how they negotiated and chal­lenged their places with each other and within social institutions were the foci of the research. The project was designed as ethnographic research and in­volved the production process, audience reception and the productions them­selves. lt has generated a range of original data that will be presented in this article. They provide new insights into the experiences and perspectives of migrant and refugee children. In this article we would like to discuss these in­sights, drawing out the wider implications for practice and policy that the re­sults of this project highlight.

In our attention for the child and its environment we follow Bronfenbren­ner (1979) who, in his view on ecological psychology, suggests that interac­tions with others and the environment are key to the development of children, and that we all experience more than one type of environment. The types of environment that apply in particular to our research are the "microsystem" (re­ferring to factors located in the immediate environment of the child: family, friends and school) and the "mesosystem" (describing the way in which fac­tors in two or more microsystems interact such as the connection between a child's home and school). 3

The experience of migration is what first and foremost informed these contexts. Living in the Diaspora, the children participating in the project and their families in the project all had experienced some degree of dismption and discontinuity. In the new country new bonds were created that allowed for es­tablishing new forms of continuity and for a redefinition of the notion of "home." In cases of Diaspora and dismption the family is the only mediator between the past and present that people can hold to. In the new country pre­cisely the family becomes the site of negotiating identities for the children as they deal with the obvious cultural tensions between the "old" and the "new" world that they are bringing into the home. Vansina in his study of oral culture (1985) refers to "double portraits" and draws a distinction between private and public image. According to his analysis, the public facade is formed according to roles, social status, values and principles, while the private image often contains Contradietory memofies and reveals hints of fear and doubt. In the media club productions, the children often created small counter-histories that contained both worlds and expressed things previously untold.

In terms of constmcting the notion of family and belanging as well as in terms of references to the past we consider instrumental the analysis of Bourdieu's habitus (1977), as the non-static, but rather subject to change set of predispositions which in turn affect actions and evaluations as a second, hidden nature or a "forgotten history." Strategies of survival of refugee chil­dren, as well as the paths of their memory are often rooted both in their cur­rent situation of uprootedness, as well as in their pre-migration habitus. Both the new and the old habitus form and reform, informing one another, the con-

3 Bronfenbrenner further distinguishes the "exosystem" (the wider social envi­ronment such as the neighbourhood) and the "macrosystem" (the larger social cultural context).

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text within which new actions and reactions could be invented. A lot of this information revealing pre-existing stmctures as well as new strategies was re­vealed not through the formal research roots, but rather through shared infor­mal social instances.

Children are active agents in making meaning in their lives andin negoti­ating their identities through their social interactions. In the context of migra­tion, ideas of farnily and friends often differ from the mainstream culture or transform to fulfill new social and emotional needs. How these processes of change in farnily and friendship are understood and negotiated within school are then of cmcial importance and were reflected in the work done by the children of CHICAM in the clubs. As family is a key issue here, we will be primarily drawing on the family theme. 4 With the help of some illustrative ex­amples from the media work done by the children we will discuss the interre­lations of conceptions of home and cultural identity as perceived by refugee and migrant children as they are being re-established in the new country.

Concepts of identity

There are different dimensions of identity that are intertwined in children' s life; they concem both the need for identification5 and a growing conscious­ness about their role in social life. Social identity articulates the relationship between the individual and his or her social environment. lt has become popu­lar among academics since the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, a period re­ferred to as the late modern ed that places identity, more specifically ethnic identity, in the forefront As Giddens (1991) points out, the need for identity has increased and the process of identity constmction has become more diffi­cult and complex. One set of factors in this respect is the experience of migra­tion and globalization. People encounter others with different histories, ambi­tions and needs and as a consequence they are getting involved in a continu­ous process of redefining themselves in relation with others. This process of identity building and of "finding oneself' is one of active intervention and transformation (12). The world of modernity enables the creation of space for more and more intimate personal expression. According to Giddens "modes of behaviour and feeling associated with sexual life have become mobile, unsettled and open."7 Hall & Du Gay (1996) convincingly argue how identity not only becomes an understanding of being, but also of becoming. If this also applies to individuals, the main focus here is on cultural identity as a

4 The authors Christopou1ou (Greece) and De Leeuw (the Netherlands) were re­sponsib1e for the fami1y theme in the project. See: Christopou1ou & De Leeuw 2004.

5 The work ofErikson (1969, 1974) on this is 1eading. 6 Giddens 1991. 7 See Giddens 1991: 12. Giddens refers to the research work of Wallerstein &

B1akes1ee 1989.

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complex of collectively experienced values and standards that allow for a group or community to imagine itself or to be imagined by others. All groups and communities are imagined and they tend tobe quite different in their style of imagining. 8 As there is no suchthing as the objectivity of differences, the process of identity construction concems the production of meaning that is given to differences between groups. Hall, a leading scholar in the field of cul­tural theory and identity politics, distinguishes between an essentialist ap­proach (the one tme self) and a non-essentialist (dynamic) approach, based on differences. In his view cultural identity primarily is organized around points of difference as it speaks to "the different ways we are positioned by and posi­tion ourselves within the narratives of the past."9 This means that our identity changes when our history will be told in a different way .10 The manner of tell­ing is as important as what is being told.

In giving voice to underprivileged minorities we can at the same time bring recogni­tion to spoken cultures, such as those of immigrants in societies dominated by the written word. As soon as we recognise the value of the subjective in individual testimonies, we challenge the accepted categories of history. We reintroduce the emotionality, the fears and fantasies carried out by the metaphors of memory .11

Identity can not be reduced to a fixed and finished object, rather it is a con­tinuously shifting position. In post-modern debates the key word here is "hy­bridization", which we prefer to use over "creolization" and "syncretism" as it refers to a shifting within and between stmctural and cultural discourses. 12

What they share is a recognition of difference and a belief in the production of something new.

There is however another side of the picture. Hybridization of cultures also underrnines old certainties and the fundamentals of identity. This is espe­cially tme for families living in the Diaspora for whom these fundamentals are cmcial. To put it differently, people may have problems with the dynamics in­volved in the process of identity constmction and they may feel the need to look for foundations. Especially in the context of migration this position needs further discussing, as the encounters between different groups of people are no Ionger just temporary. This is the main reason why Baumann considers cul­tural identity a dual discursive constmction: "all having of culture is a making of culture, yet all making of culture will be portrayed as an act of reconfirm­ing analready existing potential." 13 In order to understand the new migratory societies all over the world both the essentialist and non-essentialist ap-

8 Anderson (1983) offers a fundamental text as to what he considers "imagined communities."

9 Halll990: 225. 10 Alsosee Tonkin (1992) in her analysis ofthe construction ofidentity through the

reconstruction of the past. 11 Raphael & Thompson 1990: 2. 12 Barker 1997: 192 and further. 13 Baumann 1999: 2.

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proaches are relevant. Where you are and where you belong to are not by definition synonymous. However, the awareness of the "old place" (of origin) might be heightened in the context of moving from one such (familiar) place to a new place in the new society (one that is unfarniliar).

In the context of migration people are confronted with several degrees of discontinuity. As their notion of identity is undermined they apparently start looking for continuity in order to feel "at home" again. In the new space peo­ple feel the need to relate themselves somehow to the past. Identity thus is a question of memory and of memofies of home in particular. 14 In the context of migration identity constmction is informed by both past memory and current experience in the new place. The notion of home is being articulated in par­ticular in the concept of farnily, yet imagined.

The very definition of family came into question all through the research, as it was often both things: the family here, as well as the family there. In the course of the research the children (and ourselves) used different definitions of farnily at different times rauging from nuclear family to extended family. In order to accommodate different conceptions of family and to incorporate the current domestic circumstances of the children, we have used the concept "domestic group" interchangeably with that of "family" in reference to the current situation of each child, meaning the significant bonds between people living under the same roof and sharing daily routines and events. Wehave no­ticed that domestic groups were of cmcial importance and were often created in order to secure basic necessities and to provide an otherwise lacking framework.

Constructing family narratives

As the children were reluctant to share their memofies and to reveal informa­tion related to their roots and their past in the club, most clubs used the format of the family tree to bring the past into the club smoothly, to ac­commodate Diaspora experiences and to constmct a family narrative. Drawing a farnily tree gave a lot of information, not only about the family members and the family history, but even more so about how the format of the tree, allow­ing for the representation of dynamics and emotions involved in migratory history, was used by the children to constmct a family narrative. Their con­cept of family consisted of different generations, of people here and there, of people dead and alive, of people whose names they could not sometimes re­call as well as of friends. As examples from different countfies may illustrate the actual shape of a tree provided a shelter to their own "imagined commu­nity ." Different colours and shapes, the use of graphics, photographic portraits as well as print in various languages offered us glimpses into their private lives and their living memories.

14 Morley & Robins 1995: 91.

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Stivan, a 13-year-old boy from Iraq, who came to Greece as an unaccom­panied minor in order to escape the army, leaving all his family behind, draws a tree with thick bmnches with the names of his four siblings under his own, and the names of his parents beside those of his dead grandparents. "When I say mum or dad, I feel that they are all I have," he writes. All of a sudden, in the printed form, there is an outburst of emotion that spoken words - the very obstacle that we had been trying to surpass - did not allow. Stivan does not know yet how to read and write in Greek, as, instead of joining school he works double shifts in order to support hirnself and his family in Iraq. He asks his cousin who is fluent in Greek to write for him. He puts her picture as well as those of his other relatives who are currently living in Greece in his family tree page. He then qualifies his choice: "[ ... ] because they are like my family."

For Stivan, as well as for many migrant children the difference between "my family" and "like my family" represents a fundamental break in their pri­vate lives. "My family" is what they have known as such since they were bom, it is what they remember from their country of origin. Furthermore, it is most likely what they are now missing, the unit that broke because of or along the joumey of migration. Even if they are fortunate enough to live in the new place with part of their family or even with their whole nuclear family, they are almost always separated from parts of the wider stmcture that they have leamed to recognize as "my family." All migrant families in a sense are bro­ken families.

"Like my family" on the other hand, is what they have come to recognize as family in the new place, out of choice or out of necessity. Distaut relatives, friends, party comrades, companions in the joumey or in the camp, neighbours can all be part of the new family structure, as they are the ones to whom they may turn when in need, and their lives are often intertwined.

This division informs identity formation from the early stages of child­hood. Bourdieu, treating kinship relations as "something that people make, and with which they do something" (Bourdieu 1977: 33-35), distinguishes be­tween official kinship and practical kinship. He characterizes the relations practical because they are "continuously practiced, kept up and cultivated, in the same way as the geometrical space of a map, an imaginary representation of all theoretically possible roads and routes is opposed to the network of beaten tracks, ofpaths made even more practicable by constant use" (37-38). In the same sense, for refugee children, their notion of family is defined upon these beaten tracks, either with those who are far away or with those who are right beside them, sharing the difficulties ofbuilding a life in a new country.

In another page of the family tree book of the Greek club, Semset, an 11-year-old girl from Turkey, uses the photo of her mother holding her best friend, standing beside a satellite antenna (the latter representing the constant link with the country of origin, hence fortifying the memory and sustaining the connections). Above it, there is another photo of the mother with a boy (Semset's friend) and two adult men whom she calls her uncles although they are not related by blood but rather by friendship and solidarity through a mu-

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tual affiliation to an outlaw political party. The use of family terms in address­ing members of a wider social network is a common practice in such circum­stances. lt further denotes the importance of the concept of family as an "um­brella" under which one feels protected and secure at times of exposure and insecurity. When the family itself does not exist either at all or in the way it used to do, one has to re-create it with whatever means are available. This is comparable to van Boeschoten' s point in her study of exiled children and their separation from their parents in the aftermath of the civil war in Greece (2000), about identification with their peer group instead of their family and the re-invention of their identity through this affiliation15

• For migrant children this is a common experience whereby something which is "remembered" but may no Ionger exist as such, becomes substituted, "re-membered" and recon­stmcted in a new context.

In the Swedish club Shpresa, a girl from Kosovo Albania, talked about her relatives all around the world, from the United States to Norway, some­thing she seemed tobe quite proud of. On one occasion, when the researcher was talking about the Greek project on family trees, Shpresa spontaneously started drawing a family tree on the blackboard, just as if she were a teacher. In a short space of time she had outlined her family history of at least 68 people: aunts, uncles and cousins, etc, all of whose names she knew. In the middle of the tree, she put down her own name as if she were the most cen­tral figure. She also mentioned with a smile that one uncle had two wives.

In most clubs information coming from drawing a family tree was more relevant to the children' s interpretation of family than actual statistical data. In the same way the immediate family was conceptualized as people the children cared about and whose loss made a difference in their lives. Be­sides nuclear family members, these can also include grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. Quotes from an interview in the ltalian club where six children, which is half of the Italian club, were fatherless may illustrate children's considerations revolving around the concept of the domestic group.

Carmen: Antonio: Marisol: Renato:

Why is it always the men who leave? Yea! So why do they have kids! 7 Before, they go 'Oh, you are so beautiful, etc, etc' and then ... I still have a mother and a father.

15 There is a whole body of literatme regarding Greek refugee children in the Bal­kans in the aftermath of the civil war, referring to questions of identity and iden­tification in the context of Diaspora. See: van Boeschoten 2000; Brown 2004; Ristovic 2002; Faubion 1993; Brown & Hamilakis 2003. In the Netherlands however research regarding migrant children so far focuses more on labour im­migrants, not so much on refugees. Besides most of it is in Dutch. One of the ex­ceptions is: Crul, Lindo & Pang 2002.

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Antonio:

Marisol:

My father gone when I was two years old I can't remernher him, my brother can but I can't. One night I dream he was on a motorbike going araund and then I discover that yes, he had a motorbike, but it was a bad dream because I was trying to see his face but couldn't. I'm not going to write my father's name because is not important. My mother wants to get married again.

A Somali boy, Kambooye, in the Dutch club seemed very well aware of his roots. Though he had never seen either his great grandfather, or his grandfa­ther, he knew stories about his ancestors and it was through these stories that his ancestors remairred present in his memory. It was very obvious that his an­cestors appeared in his family tree. Also for Sarah in the German club, draw­ing a family tree provided a way of (re)defining her own relationship to her German and American relatives. She told the researcher that she dreams in German and that in her dreams her American father from whom she lives apart also speaks German, which he is not able to do!

In some clubs also photographs proved to be useful media to help to con­stmct a family narrative in cases of dismption. Ibish was the only member of the Swedish club who showed family photos from Kosovo. On one occasion after a couple of months in CHICAM he brought in a set of pictures, which were well thumbed. They were taken during a trip to Kosovo when the whole farnily visited the village they used to live in. Several pictures were focused on the remains of their house, which was bumt down during the civil war. It was originally a farm surrounded by buildings. Then there were pictures showing how his father was building a new house. One picture featured a small cottage in woods. It looked new. It was a cottage that they had been given as aid after the war and were supposed to live in during the restoration of the farm. Ibish said that the house was of poor quality and that the roof leaked. Other pictures were very beautiful; a lake or parts of a bay. Though the village was not on a map, Ibish pointed out the spot. He also noticed that the text on the map was in Serbo-Croatian language. During the club activi­ties, Ibish retumed to his memofies from the village more than once. He also made a drawing of the village and the graveyard, where his grandfather is buried.

These experiences tell us a great deal about the "economy of memories" that migrant children adopt. In most family narratives, there was a definite emphasis on positive rather than negative recollections. There was often an observable need to leave out what was perceived or experienced as negative, painful and destmctive, either by suppressing it or by altematively shifting the focus to reverse feelings, some of which were constmcted in retrospect. We experienced how the CHICAM club could offer a space to reconstmct family history with the help of audiovisual media. What is kept in the memory, is what can free the imagination and the projection into the future: the strength, the courage, the persistence, the lack of fear. All these past things could be utilized in the present. What is kept is what can be used. The rest is discarded, forgotten, repressed, or left unspoken. Almost all children showed this "econ-

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omy of memories" at very specific moments during club work, and it was clearly in operation in their families as well. Family history was thus a defin­ing factor in this kind of memory work. lt is not only where one comes from, that defines one's identity in the present; the stories that are told about one's origin, and the (big) picture created by these stories, also contribute to the no­tion of"who I am" at a certain moment in one's personal history.

Negotiating memory

Negotiating memory is a complex activity. On the one hand, the reconstruc­tion of past life serves to keep one in touch with the "positive" aspects of life in the country of origin. On the other hand, it also brings forth "negative" ex­periences, which arenot always easy to deal with. Memory has to keep one's origins alive. At the same time it has to provide explanations and justifica­tions. This implies a constant and determining conflict. As a result, the mem­ory of the family is often strictly kept within the hausehold borders and the private sphere. CHICAM club work helped to bring these memofies into the public sphere and to bridge the gap between private and public. Many a time, CHICAM became the space where things that would not be easily brought up at home or at school, were expressed and discussed.

Memory negotiation is also a very sensitive area and plays an important role in the process of identity building. At the same time it makes it difficult to camprehend the past of the family. Remernbeting relatives, places and friends in fact always added a melancholy mood to the children' s narration, along with feelings of loneliness and loss. For example Eritria from Ethiopia in the Italian club said: "I arrived here two years ago, with my mom, my father and my brothers [ ... ]. I'm so lonely; poor me! All of my stuff is still over there. They weren't able tobring it here, pictures, dresses [ ... ]." Even though her nu­clear family was in Italy, she felt alone. Besides this melancholy, there was also a will, even necessity, to present the country of origin as a pleasant place - a space of harmony, joy and freedom: memofies were filled with romantic notions of the home country, focusing on positive aspects.

Photographs seem the most concrete proof of a family living "there." The children in several clubs confirmed their importance. Kambooye from Soma­lia in the Dutch club: "you should only know how often we look at them!" This was also tme for Beaugan;:on from Congo. Both their families seemed to use photos to keep memofies of the family "there" alive and to tell stories. Most children in the Dutch club had their own photo album, some even had their own photos. Hakan in the German CHICAM club kept photographs from Turkey in a metal box, which revived in him positive memofies of a harmoni­ous family life. Though some children pretended there were no photographs to be taken to the club (as with the Syrian Kurdish kids in the Greek club), their existence and importance became clear when the researcher visited the family: actually there were a lot!

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How families dealt with photographs may illustrate the very different ways of negotiating memofies both by the children and their families. These are partly due to different expefiences of Diaspora. We will discuss several cases. The first case illustrates how even absent pictures can be an incentive and a tool for recollection. Mozde in the Greek club remernbered her joumey from Afghanistan to Greece, one evening dufing an informal interview at her parents' kiosk where she occasionally works. She had not mentioned anything about it before and had evaded the question. This time, after bfiefly claiming not to remember, she began by contrasting there to here in terms of ffiends and explained how the pictures of the family got lost on the joumey:

"We knew too many people there, we had friends and relatives, cousins, uncles, aunts, but mostly uncles. They have now spread everywhere. I do not remernher them any more, not even their names." 'Do you have pictures ofthem?' "No ... they got lost." 'How did they get lost?' "On thejoumey."

She explains how she was walking along with her parents while they were carrying her younger siblings. The joumey companions were helping them carry their luggage.

We did [manage to get here], but the others didn't. They were following but they could not keep up with our pace. They were left behind. We kept going. We went on. They stayed behind. We don't know what happened to them. That's how the photos got lost. They were helping us carry our stuff. When they stayed behind all that got lost. W e were the only ones who managed. Just us. Our family.

Mozde narrates in a stmctured way: from there to here, "us" versus "the oth­ers," "me" as opposed to the "rest of the family." Mozde in her mind associ­ated the loss of the joumey companions with the loss of their photos and the disappearance of her past. As she thrust forward, her past withdrew. The faces on the photos (along with the faces of all those left behind) were fading away. The past for Mozde was another country.

In the Dutch club children made a family video using existing photo­graphs. Two Iraqi brothers, Elias and Simon, only brought a few pictures from home. Both boys had great difficulties in remembefing who the people were. Their struggle is reflected in the silent intervals in the story, told by Elias, to go with the pictures in the video. The obvious lack of memofies had a reason that became clear when the researchers visited the family. Their mother clearly stated that she did not show the pictures to the children, because she did not want them to form a picture of life and family there: "I really don't know if I am fight not showing them the pictures. But for the moment we want to focus on the Netherlands and try to build up a new life here and leave life in Iraq behind. I am reluctant to tell much about Iraq, because I don't want the children to long for a certain image of Iraq that they possibly

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will never experience. That is not realistic." The family was strongly living in the here and now. To some extent they hid apart of their history from the next generation, while expressing a parallel anxiety about adapting to a new reality and leaving the old world behind.

The reworking of pictures, absent or present, also helped to (re )define their own relationship with the past. Not only photographs, but also other "media" (drawings) and less obvious activities, such as travelling, helped to trigger memofies about journeys and places where the children had lived. When the Swedish researcher was driving Hana, a girl from Kosovo Albania home, she started to talk about a joumey to Kosovo, when the whole family was assem­bled. That was a happy moment in her life. The bestthingwas the car trip it­self and that they had stopped and slept over on three different occasions. But when they arrived in Yugoslavia, they had to drive across the mountains, and then her father was afraid. When drawing a childhood memory, Hana was composing a picture of a couple seen from behind, sitting on a sofa and watehing a blue-green sea or ocean. lt was her family on a visit to Kosovo. A year later, in a series of photos from her summer holiday with her mother in Kosovo, she retumed to a similar composition, where her mother is sitting on a stone in the sea or ocean. The scene with the parents at the lake seems a pro­jection of a romantic dream about Kosovo, cultivated by the parents, a dream they wanted to preserve and which helped them to overcome all the horrible events that took place there: an idealized representation of "home."

In the German and UK clubs it tumed out to be much harder to get to know how children had conceptualized the past, due to both the reluctance that the researchers displayed to deal with this and the fact that over the year farnily stories changedas in the UK club. Stories were told differently accord­ing to context. In the UK club Sahra from Somalia was very willing to speak about her family and their lives but it became clear that what she told was not the present reality but the stories now past, stories of happier times. She told these stories to maintain an image and to help herself through the present bad times. In a video made at the very beginning of the club she showed photos of her farnily (particularly her father who had died) and talked about Somalia. That film is very much based in the past.

David from Angola maintained his silence on his past throughout the year but even then his changing attitude to his present and future meant that in some ways he was reassessing his past or his relationship with it. Haamid took a long time to talk about the family he used to live with in Guinea and then he did it mainly through drawings representing the village and the house he had lived in with his farnily, and some family members. Being reunited with his father was a major factor in how he viewed past and present. However, he never spoke about his mother.

Meroe, a girl in the Italian club from Ethiopia who does not live with her parents in ltaly, showed a drawing made for her grandparents with some greetings written in ltalian. She had apparently lost her mother-tongue lan­guage, having arrived in ltaly six years ago. When the researcher asked her if

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she was going to send the drawing on, she said no, due to both the langnage barrier and the great amount of time that had passed since the last time she communicated with her grandparents. She kept the drawing for herself on her bed, often tonehing it tenderly. As we see in the above situation, loving memofies can also hurt. Silence is also very significant in this context.

What stands out from the experiences in all clubs is that an important aspect about memory negotiation is the family situation as such: children who have no family at all or have a really problematic one encountered more diffi­culties when elaborating ideas of past experiences abroad. Not only was the symbolic aspect of the connection complicated, but also the technical one was quite intricate. Children who had good relationships with parents enjoyed mo­re occasions to keep in touch with relatives in their countfies of origin, while the others did not. Some of the children in the Italian club had significantly poor relationships with their parents. Obviously in these cases they did not want the researcher to meet their family. The use of video, on the other hand, gave them a new chance to express the anger and fmstration they lived with in a free manner. Some of them used the camera (and the CHICAM space in general) to "confess" bad ideas and difficult feelings about parents and rela­tives. The CHICAM Club became a space to free these emotions, while being a space well separated and protected from the family. Although some of these issues would be raised for children from any background, how family history is viewed and experienced by migrant children in particular is above all for­med through the experiences of family distance, separation and reunification.

Memory and (questions of) identity

The negotiation of memory shapes identity. Self-definition in the new country is often characterized by referring to what is left behind. The roots may stand as a source of inspiration for the current life as well as a source of strength. On the other hand, the past may be re-invented and accommodated into the present, in order to create mechanisms of survival and new, hybrid identities, articulating positions drawn from a variety of discourses and sites.

Beaugan;:on in the Dutch club had no autobiographical memofies of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In order to create a family history, he in­vented stories that mixed the stories that were being told within his family and the ones he might have heard or read for example on TV or in the newspaper. He used these stories about the past repeatedly to develop his identity in the present: "I kept asking [my mother] when we finally could go there [Congo]. In the end we went for a vacation and to see some family. Everyone has a nice villa, but it is dangeraus because of robbery. I have witnessed one myself." As it was impossible to go to Congo because of the political and military situa­tion, the boy' s mother confirmed that they indeed never went there. The dif­ference between truth and fantasy did not seem to be relevant. Creating a fully formed picture was more important. Media helped him to fulfill this ambition:

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in the club, he made a family video with the help of existing pictures from the family and a "new story" along with these told by Beaugan;:on hirnself This combination of pictures and commentary made it possible for him to tell his family history as a continuous story in which the "there" and "here" are linked. We also noticed this link on a different level. He represented hirnself as an average teenage boy (clothes) who does not hide his African back­ground, using African icons in his drawings, wearing family jewellery: an Af­rican chain that his uncle gave his father and his father passed on to him. On one of hisvideo diary tapes he played a sort of African king, putting on a cur­tain for a cloak, and dancing.

In Beaugan;:on' s case, there is first and foremost an observable need to es­tablish continuity between past and present in order to surpass the discontinu­ity of migration. The constmction of a family history serves as a tool in this pursuit, bringing together, on a shared and recognizable ground, things that have been standing apart. The memory of his past is filtered through the knowledge of the present. On the other hand, his current situation becomes connected to his past and his roots, as though the one stems from the other through a smooth continuity rather than a dismptive discontinuity. In pursuing this, he is mixing tmth and fantasy in order to constmct his personal history and place it within a context. History and the past are re-invested with mean­ing through imagination. When the reallinks are missing and the explanations do not always come handy, imagination serves as a way of building bridges and holding together tentative, fragile and fragmented realities.

On the other hand, the pressures of adaptation may challenge habits kept for the sake of nostalgia and in order to sustain the sense of belonging. This is not simply a matter of cultural confusion. Living between and within two worlds and two cultures (or more in some cases) the children build hybrid identities, pertaining to more than one frame. This became visible when the children brought to the club music from their countfies they liked to listen to, and stories related to the joumeys they made to their home countries.

In the Greek club, the children were asked to bring an object from their country of origin and speak about it in front of the camera. This request caused some confusion to the two Turkish girls, Odil and Emine, who were bom in Greece, as to what exactly we meant by "their country": this one or the other? They seemed to find it difficult to locate and define the concept "our country".

Odil: Emine: Odil: Emine:

Which country? This is our country. We were bom here! Where should webring something from?

Some children did not bring anything, told a story or sung a song (which they heard or leamed in their country, but which was not necessarily representative of their country). The choices, however, were not always charged with per­sonal meaning. Often, they depicted what they thought others wanted to see or

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hear. Beyond this schematic representation however, a lot of culturally em­bodied knowledge was conveyed (dressing in traditional costume, dancing in a ceremonial way) that revealed the dynamics involved in continuously nego­tiating between different identities. Michelle, for example, sung a French song, which she learned, at her French Catholic school in Congo. Her choice of representative things or images was defined in reference to her French edu­cational background as opposed to the Congalese or the Greek. This was the dominant culture to which she was exposed, and at the same time, her "pass­port" to both countries: French education and Catholicism would be accept­able in both contexts, if not considered superior to the local.

The negotiation of memory was filtered down to a "symbolic" item that involved questions of identity. Claiming the right to pertain to different con­texts and identities, as well as selecting their own dynamic of when and how, proved to be the determining element in the clubs, where the children set their own mles and acted accordingly.

Family representations

How the children experienced family life in the new country and the living be­tween two worlds and two cultures, how they built not only flexible but also hybrid identities became visible in their representations of family life as such. The children articulated their own conceptions of home in the new situation both in terms of success and in terms of a continuous mediation between the old and new which appeals to different dimensions of identity as they are be­ing experienced in children's lives: to mention the need for identification in becoming an adolescent, the notion of self-representation in relation with their closest peer groups and their particular ethnic background that is informed by experiences of dismption. 16

In her family video show a girl from Armenia in the Dutch club exclu­sively used photos of the family having fun, showing affection towards each other. The photos were all taken in the host country. One ofthem even shows the family celebrating Saint Nicholas, a truly Dutch feast. The representation of the happy family life indicates the family' s ability to adapt as well as the family's successful attempts to start a new life in a new country. A Kosovo Albanian boy in the Swedish club in hisvideo essay Mohammed's Family, fo­cuses on status symbols, such as electrical appliances and technical equipment in the kitchen as well as the computer and the two parable antennas. Material assets and economic status often act as symbols of integration and of doing well. Mohammed's choice to focus on them, perhaps more than indicating that the material standard of living was important for him, was an attempt to affirm and confirm to hirnself and to others that his family had earned its place in the

16 See Erikson 1969, 1974; Giddens 1991; Hall & Du Gay 1996.

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new country. In this particular cases identity was not so much a question of memofies of the past, not so much a question of "becoming" rather in its em­phasis on "economic success" it confirms identity in terms of "being," being well, being like anyone else.

Other video productions illustrate how "home" has become a site of nego­tiating identity. Sahra, the Somali girl in the UK club took the camera home to film in her house, at her local shop, on the way to school and with some friends at school. 17 She modelled the first section of her production on a show on MTV on which celebrities show the viewer round their homes. Her sister welcomes you at the door and says: ''Come in, 1'11 show you my palace." Once we are in the house the girl guides the viewer through the living room (the TV is on and music is playing but no-one is there!), through the back of the house where the snooker table is. Then into the kitchen where food is ready on the cooker. There is also a stereo there "in case you get bored when you are cooking." As Sahra's sister goes round the house she lists all the ob­jects in each room: bed, wardrobe, TV etc. Downstairs again and we are shown out of the house; "You've seen my palace now, so get your arse out here, go, go!" The video movies illustrates both Sahra's family oriented atti­tude and her orientation towards the new present. Also in interviews with the UK researcher the girl described herself mainly as "London-ish," while at the same time she pointed to her Somali identity in terms of food, however not in terms of religion or traditions connected with the past. On the contrary she rather stressed the fact that being in a new country for her meant the possibil­ity of distancing herself from traditional mles especially as they apply to women. These decisions are closely linked to building new identities that help children to be part of their new lives. In Sahra's case this put her in conflict with some of her Somali community (if not directly with family members). She was building her own new future.

Often, under the pressure of their new peers and the influences of the new society as well as the media images which bombarded them with new cultural codes, there was a tendency on behalf of migrant children to dismiss what the farnily and the hausehold symbolized. 18 The new role models in the country of residence as well as the children' s exposure to other ways of farnily life, fre­quently led them to a questioning and a severe criticism of the family roles and rules. In addition to their passage to adolescence, this usually caused fric­tion within the family. In the Italian club some ofthe children who were living in a convent even admitted that they were "ashamed of their parents." There were various reasons for this such as the cultural gaps, the langnage problems, but also psychological dimensions of identity formation can be observed here, such as the tensions in parent-child relationships especially on the verge of adolescence, their consequent need to keep a situation under their own control

17 Description from the national UK report on family relations. 18 This is a clear illustration ofBronfenbrenner's "mesosystem" pointing to the in­

teraction between relevant factors in the immediate environment of children.

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and to affirm their own perception of themselves without the mediation of their parents.

However, when requested to conceptualize the "home" in the CHICAM club, most children chose to focus on the emotional relations at home and not on the material standard. The "home" was rarely represented as a site of mate­rial objects within which one lives. Even when material objects were carefully placed in a "homey" mise-en-scene the purpose was to communicate a feel­ing: to convey the warmth of the domestic space. In Clara 's colours and sounds a Lithuanian girl in the UK club discusses the ambivalence of being in the new country, pertaining to both the past and present. In her film she shows objects that are a mixture of those that have great emotional significance, have associations with the past and also with connecting her to the past. 19 Others are entirely connected to the present. Each one can be seen as significant. They go in this order: a red heart object (filmed after a red decorative heart that her grandfather had sent her and that hangs on her bedroom wall), the blue wallpaper from her bedroom, a map, a cooking pot, a green bag she had been given, a soft toy, a pencil, a Winnie the Pooh clock, a picture of a mon­key she has hauging on her bedroom wall. She has kept the film very personal to her but also quite anonymaus and unconnected to her family and everyday life. lt was significant that she did not want to include her family or in a sense locate where they were. The warmth of the domestic space was filtered through the girl's ambivalence about being in the new country, as she under­stood why they had left Lithuania yet feeling tremendous homesickness for "there."

In the Greek club, when explaining the pictures that she shot at home, Rengin, a girl from Turkey, admitted that she re-arranged the objects in the kitchen in order to make it "look beautiful." Her mother was standing in the middle of most of her pictures and also in the family tree page that she made, nicely dressed and with make-up on. Rengin was very eager to emphasize her mother' s importance in holding the hausehold together and taking care of the whole family. In the Swedish club, in a documentary on her home, a girl fo­cused on family relations, her parents, siblings, for example a visit to her brother's home, where she put emphasis on filming his little baby son. She here had the chance to focus on emotional moments as when her mother was hugging the cute little baby.

What is emphasized even then, is the role of, for example, the mother in creating and maintaining the "hearth," the familial bonds and the closeness, which keep a family together despite dismptions and displacements. That after all is what each one of the children had to leam well and constantly keep in mind: home is where the hearth is.

19 Description from the national UK report on family relations.

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Notions of cultural belonging

Cultural identity is negotiated and redefined in the new place, even when the ties to the ethnic or religious background are strictly maintained. Cultural identity is a tentative concept, especially as it closely encounters a new world, new influences and new habits. The latter cannot but have a major effect upon the values and habits that were carried along, even in regard to day-to-day routines. The conflict between the old world and the new is one of the major issues that all migrant families or communities have to deal with. The role of the migrant child within the family and outside the farnily is cmcial: cultural identities between different cultures, changing responsibilities, roles being sought and negotiated, all reflect upon the children even before the adults. The "hearth" was not a fixed place, rather became a site where cultural identity was negotiated and redefined in the new place allowing for the constmction of flexible and hybrid identities, that enable the children to choose from the dif­ferent cultural and social worlds they are part of. The "hearth" thus changes as the farnily encounters these different worlds. Farnily routines, events and celebrations are ofvital importance in preserving the cultural identity of a mi­grant community and are often attended with more dedication than they would in the country of origin. The pace of life inside the hausehold is kept with a remarkable similarity to that in the country of origin. When everything "out­side" is changed, the "inside" of the hausehold and the family life remain - or stmggle to remain - the same. Clutching upon old habits and re-investing them with new significance is a vital process for people who have experienced major dismptions and discontinuities.

Many a time the children expressed the idea of food being central to their cultural identity. Eating is an important everyday ritual for most families, and a Iot of time and energy is invested in this. The farnily table is the "hearth" around which the farnilial bonds are nurtured and sustained, and the time spent with farnily members and friends around eating is valuable for re­asserting the unity of the farnily, a unity often threatened by the shift in cir­cumstances. Bodily memory sustains complex emotional ties. Although the children were exposed to local dietary habits (such as fast food), they often expressed their preference for the diet of the country of origin.

Eating routines in most farnilies followed as in the country of origin. Every meal is a shared event and the fact that it is prepared with the material and emotional ingredients that it has always been maintains and re-affirms a sense of consistence, collective identity and belonging. Food is emotionally charged as a family ritual. Masja, an Armenian girl in the Netherlands, de­clared in a rather representative way that family life for her "means sitting and eating together." All the children in the UK club talked about family outings, parties, celebrations. These were mainly with the family members.

From the children' s stories about how religious holidays and events are being celebrated at home and within the community as weil as from our direct observations, we have noticed how family routines (i.e. fasting) and traditions

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are often stmctured by religion. Often religion plays the role of sustaining cul­tural identity and seiVes as a rentinder and a fortifier of habits and traditions which were forcibly left behind. This becomes all the more important when "homelessness" is experienced in asylum seeker's centres where people wait for a (temporary) residence permit or tobe expelled. Fora Syrian girl in the Dutch club the experience of homelessness deeply influenced her perception of the world and her immediate future. She reworked her experiences in a drawn animation movie. In an inteiView she highlighted especially the rituals and religious holidays that were celebrated intensively and remernbered viv­idly in the centre. These celebrations gave her something to hold on. The nu­clear family was very close, besides she felt strongly related to other Syrian families. Here the notion of the (constmcted) extended family comes to the fore, offering primarily a site of remembering the home country and of recon­stmcting an ethnic identity! She bonded both with children who shared the experience of living in an asylum seeker's centre and with children who shared the same ethnic background.

From this and other examples we noticed how cultural identity indeed was often experienced through religion; many of the children followed the stan­dards and values connected to religion, at least to the family' s way of practic­ing religious laws and mles. In some occasions where the parents declared to be atheist, the children may follow the religious traditions of their country of origin. Continuity in family life was also sustained through langnage. The children all spoke the local langnage in the public space, however nearly all spoke their mother tongne at home with their parents, most of who were not fluent in the new language. Langnage is a strong bearer of cultural identity; it contains the family stories and histories, it helps people to remain connected to a homeland. On the other hand, langnage is also a tool to develop a new sense of identity, to get connected to new communities. Concerning langnage, the children' s role is cmcial in respect to the rest of their family, as they are the ones who leam it first (mainly at school but also through the everyday use in the neighbourhood, playground or their other activities) and who in turn act as translators and mediators. The parents often have to rely on their children in coming to contact with the locals, something that affects the distribution and negotiation of roles within the family. For all families langnage seems tobe an important tool in building the notion of continuity in family life as it is here and now, but also for some children langnage represents possible ways ofbe­ing mobile, of finding their place in a global world; they preferred to speak English.

In all media clubs in the countfies involved the representation of family life had two major aspects: on the one hand it was geared towards a constant attempt to sustain the family links that had been dismpted by the joumey, while on the other hand it was directly related to the investment made in mak­ing a new start in the new country. These contrasting attitudes towards the family in terms of the family images that were projected by migrant children are significant in capturing the tension that they are experiencing. The conflict

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between the old world and the new is one of the major issues that all migrant families or communities have to deal with. Family life itself becomes affected seeking its place in terms of tradition and in terms of modernization in a global world. lt could be argued, that often migrant children experience a split reality or learn to incorporate a dual discursive construction, caught between two very different worlds: that of the current country which is new and unex­plored, and to some extent feared, and that of the country of origin which is often painfully left behind, yet mostly vigorously sustained within the family through both memory and desire. Private space is hence differentiated from public space. Different roles are allocated to different spaces. Family life in it­selfbecomes a site of negotiating cultural identities.

Family as mediator between the private and the public

Inside the clubs, family life was not a constant reference, or an easily talked about subject. There were different reasons for this among which: traumatic experiences, being a teenager, having bad parent -child relationships, identity separation between family space and school space. Yet, how the children ex­perienced family life and how they defined their role within the family, has become visible at many moments both implicitly and explicitly during our club work. lt slowly became part of the ongoing discussions, but not before establishing a close relation of mutual trust. Even then, it was mostly dis­cussed on an individual basis and not in the group. Access to family life for the CHICAM researchers was limited. The private space of family life was carefully kept separate. Besides we have noticed at some points a dialectical relationship between being a child or teenager and being a migrant. One way to deal with this seemed to clearly divide and segregate different roles into different spaces (outside and inside the family).

In defining their place as children within the family and outside the family, the children were challenged to negotiate between the demands of the family traditions and mles and the demands of the outside world. This also involves negotiation of new roles between the parents and the children. Parental inter­vention ranged from regulated freedom and autonomy to strict control. On the one hand, there is the fear ofthe unknown, which may lead parents to want to control all their children's activities in order to protect them and to avoid ex­posure to dangeraus situations. On the other hand, having to survive with meagre means in a new country may require the participation of all the family members in subsistence activities. Family members have to rely on one an­other and show tmst. Parental control may be direct and prescriptive or indi­rect and oriented. Iustmetions and advice were a common form of such con­trol, as well as precautions or threats. Another equally effective way however is when the current situation is seen as much better than the alternative in the country of origin - thus cultivating a sense of obligation of the children to­wards their parents. The degree of openness and freedom that the parents al-

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lowed in the family relations depended also on the degree of integration and social involvement and the existence of a wider social network. Inevitably, the new mles and circumstances increased insecurity and the fear towards the un­known. Parental control and regulations were usually related to the expecta­tions of the parents for the future of their children. Migrant parents invest in the future of their children and in offering them the best possible opportuni­ties, mainly through education. This may also offer some security in terms of their long-term plans. Almost Contradietory there was often a high level of ex­pectation in terms of fulfilling duties within the family (i.e. looking after younger children), when parents had to be away for work and that kept the children away from school. Taking on more responsibilities at a young age in­evitably makes the children more autonomous.

The video production that the girls in the Italian club made, Rufes of Life, discusses the dialectical relationship between being a migrant and being a teenageras well as the different roles children take up in different spaces. The articulation of their wish not to be treated as kids and to set their own mles, and at the same time the realization of their responsibility to look after them­selves and to behave as adults fending for themselves are communicated as the main messages of the film. This is but one aspect of growing up in a new country. lt illustrates how different dimensions of identity (e.g. psychological and ethnic) become interwoven even when they are addressed at different moments.

However many a time the domestic space itselfbecomes a place to explore different sometimes even conflicting roles that the children are expected to play within the family. A Dutch animation movie, using liquorice of all-sorts, displays this as the maker, a boy from Congo, represents hirnself looking after his three baby sisters and brothers who disturb his favourite activity at home: watehing music videos. He simultaneously points to the global youth culture that he enjoys and to his African background using African iconography in his animation drawings. Here the crossroad of different cultures is linked to fam­ily life as it manifests itselfwithin the private space ofthe house. Wehave ob­seiVed how for the children and their families "family" indeed was primarily a private, even domestic space in the literally sense that was kept separate from the public domain. In the CHICAM club the family became a subject matter that involved the interaction between the domestic and the public space. In this interaction the children were the main mediators linking the outside world to the inside space of the family.

From how media actually were used in stmcturing communication among family members and from the symbolic meanings that were attached to media within the family we noticed the function of the family as mediator between private and public. There is much to say about this as it involves parental con­trol of media consumption of the children and the shift between different cul­tures as is expressed e.g. in renting video movies from the home country and watehing the national news in the host country. More important tumed out to be the role of satellite TV as a link between the "there" and "here." Often it

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played the role of the hearth: the focal point around which the family gath­ered. Tuned to programs in the country of origin, it stood as a constant re­minder and a permanent link. lt became a relentless carrier of the life there into the life here: the satellite brought the public space of the distaut country of origin into the private space of the living room. All in all the wide range of media use within the private space of the family offered the children a plat­form through which they were able to experience a plurality of possible life styles parallel to a plurality of identities; this applies in a particular way to children growing up in the context of Diaspora.

Concluding remarks

The first thing that is affected in the lives of children in migration, is the fam­ily. Family relations are always dismpted, whether this affects an immediate or an extended network. The family being the main mediator between the past and present in the new situation becomes a site of negotiating identities. This is especially tme for children as they are the first to bring the new world into the home. "Horne" then accommodates the encounter of different worlds and images, both public and private, informed both by the pre-migration habitus and the Diaspora habitus. Notions of home and belanging shift, as they have to adapt to the new world that the children encounter. The outside world of the new country primarily interacts with the inside world of the home. In the con­text of migration family life replaces "home" as a pillar of identity, yet it is continuously negotiated in the migratory context where the family lives.

The family theme tumed outtobe the most difficult to deal with both with the children and the researchers. The research methodology uneavered aspects of children's lives that are hard to get at. The research project has made clear how media can be used as tools for different purposes, addressing key areas of children's lives, speaking to the different realities as they are being experi­enced by them. These experiences were articulated through media production processes without the researchers having to ask about these explicitly.

The CHICAM club first and foremost provided a productive space where the primary concem was to let the children's voice be heard and to let their own gaze be recorded. For children with limited or no access to such spaces, the club established a platform of communication with other children with si­milar experiences, as well as a platform upon which to step and articulate their own sense of who they are. By making media productions, the children cre­ated a particular media space for themselves in which they could explore the potential of media as means of communication and where they were able to represent themselves on their own terms and to speak about themselves in a free way.

The insights drawn from the research may inform practice and policy in several ways as the children's voices were central in the project. Media pro­duction helped children elaborate on their migratory experiences. Access to

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media production and expression appears to be an important means for nego­tiating memory and finding their place in the new society. Such activities could be made available as part of school curriculum or community activities. Media also provide migrant families with opportunities for expression of their own experiences and perspectives. Platforms that allow for exchange among different communities can be seen as vital instmments in intercultural com­munication. They in turn provide useful data for researching Diaspora experi­ences among families.

As may have become clear from the data that we presented "flexibility" is a key issue in addressing family relations in a migratory context. This applies to theoretical concepts of identity and children's experiences of discontinuity and dismption alike. The process of identity building is a continuous process that involves a permanent redefinition of oneself in relation to others. Finding "oneself' in a migratory context is informed by both past memory and current experience in the new world. W e have observed how making media produc­tions facilitates the process of identity building as it involves making "narra­tives" and representations of family life in which identities are being created and given meaning. Not only did the children articulate flexibility in their conceptions of family and home, also they seemed to have incorporated the changing power relationships that take place within families in transition. Children becoming the mediators with the new world often form hybrid iden­tities between the family culture and the new society; however in the new con­text they also need safety and stability as pillars of a new house that could ac­commodate feelings of "belonging."

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VIEWS FROM A SOUTHERN ITALIAN MOUNTAIN VILLAGE

Jan C. Oberg

One day a tourist came and asked me to describe my town. So I said to him that it was called Tramonti, that it is a very simple town but located very nicely between the mountains [tra i monti]. Here in Tramanti there is a lot of nature and the air is clean, but there are not so many people here since they all went away - to the north.

The community of Tramonti being described by 11-year-old Vittorio is lo­cated in the Southem Italian Campania region in the mountains of the Amal­fitan peninsula only a few kilometres from the Costiera Amalfitana. With its breathtaking cliffs and attractions (Amalfi, Ravello, Positano etc.), this coastal region has been considered one of the "oldest and most famous tourist areas" in Italy and is called on armually by innumerable tourists from around the world (Richter 1998: 7).

Very few of these tourists stray in to the 13 small.frazione (harnlets) of Tramonti. 1 Instead, this mountain town is "connected to the world," as its residents say, in another way, namely through its migrants. Or, as some pupils from the local secondary school revealed to me, "who goes on a holiday to Tramonti? Well, the emigrants from the north do!"

The periodical absence or presence of a significant part of the population does in fact influence life in the town significantly. When I first came trudging through the snow of the seemingly deserted town in the winter of 1996 work­ing in a joint project of the universities of Bremen and Rome on "Children' s spaces in a tourist region," I was met with a friendly yet puzzled shaking of heads when asking questions about the community's children. 2 There were other, more urgent problems, it seemed, principal among them the problern of emigration. There was only little industry, people told me, agriculture was de­teriorating and thus no longer provided enough jobs. Most people from Tra-

Tramanti today is made up of 13 so-called frazione (larger hamlets), each with its own institutions including a church and a kindergarten. Around 50 smaller, formerly "independent" hamlets - often constituting only one or two households - have been incorporated into these frazione.

2 The research project at the University of Bremen took place in the winter of 1996 und er the leadership of Maya N adig and Dieter Richter in cooperation with the UniversitaLa Sapienza (Rome) and the Centro Universitario Per I Beni Cul­turali (Ravello ). The results of the study were presented in the exhibit "Una geografia dell'infanzia" in Ravello and Bremen.

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monti would emigrate sooner or later. This, they said, would be the major problem.3 The number of residents has in fact shrunk by half to about 3900 since 1950 (CDT 1991). The unemployment rate in Tramonti averaged 32 per cent in the 1990s, youth unemployment was around 60 per cent. 4

I would therefore, predicted one of my first informants, not find children in Tramonti anyway. Despite these gloomy prospects I managed to meet sev­eral children in the following weeks. Their knowledge about the local migra­tion history was remarkable, as 13 year-old Marianna demonstrated:

At the beginning of the [20th] century, so many people emigrated from Tramanti to foreign places like North America, South America, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. These people left and they had to leave their fields, their family and their horneland behind. In the 1950s a lot of people emigrated to European countries like Germany, France, Switzerland and England. In the past 20 or 30 years many young people ha­ve left Tramanti for Northem Italy where they specialized in Pizza.

The children of Tramonti grow up in a social environment that extends well beyond local geographicallimits and social relationships. Tramonti's migrants are an ideal example of migrant networks as described in the sociological and anthropologicalliterature of the last decade. 5 Many of the network structures described there can be found in Tramonti. The migration pattem of the Tra­montini, for example, reflects one of "impermanent movement", i.e. instead of true emigration, we are dealing with a circular movement between sending and receiving society. 6 The contours of the ernerging "transnational social space" of children and their farnilies can be traced geographically from Tra­manti via the Italian North into Switzerland, Germany and America.7

3 The local economy in Tramanti is thus tied closely to the activities of their emi­grants in the "north"; without their remittances and inter-family support struc­tures (which also prepares the way for temporary emigration to the north by ad­ditional relatives), the situation of many families would be, according to local opinion, completely hopeless.

4 Beguinot 1994. 5 Ackermann 1997; Glick Schiller 1997; Keamey 1995, 1996; Morokvasic & Ru­

dolph 1994; Pries 1997. 6 Salt 1987: 243. 7 Pries 1997. In Ludger Pries' understanding the term "transnational social space"

means the everyday life-worlds that develop in the context of international mi­gration processes. They are "spatially diffused" but at the same time "constitute more than a merely transitory social space, which serves as an important referen­tial structure for social positions and for the structuring of people's everyday life, biographical ( employment) projects and identities [ .. .]" (Preis 1996: 23 ). This in­cludes the affected children, one has to add. And all this is true for Tramonti. These impulses from migrations studies and transnational anthropology (Appa­durai 1998) have found little echo in childhood studies so far. An exception is Dorle Drackle (1996). In "Jung und wild" [Young and wild], she suggests to take into consideration the "interrelatedness of national with transnational processes" in future "studies of childhood and youth" (39).

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Beside its geographical extension, this transnational children' s space also includes an imaginary dimension, which by means of employing the term il nord is equipped with meanings including both fears and desires. "When I grow up, I want to go to the north," says 13-year-old Fortunato, "because there is lots of work and you can improve your life and you can have fun both at work andin your free time." Andrea, also 13, has a more concrete vision: 'Tve decided to one day go to work in my uncle's pizzeria in the north!"

Many children seemingly have no greater desire than to follow their broth­ers, uncles or cousins as pizza bakers to the north. To them, migration appar­ently bears a far more positive meaning than the general complaints heard in the town would suggest.

How then do the children deal with these contradicting implications of mi­gration? What can their perceptions and interpretations reveal about Tramonti and its migrants? These are the focal questions I will be dealing with and I will do so by describing and analyzing a collection of over 200 short essays written by the children - interpreting them in connection to my observations, interviews and conversations. 8 By letting the children speak for themselves I am trying to meet the demands of a new anthropology of childhood which looks at children as active producers of culture rather than at childhood as an intermediary phase before adulthood. 9 Following Florence Weiss (1995) statements made by children themselves are the focus of my work on chil­dren.10 The essays from which I will quote in the following are: "My favourite place to play" (1), "My house" (II), "My farnily" (III), "My most exciting ad­venture with my friends" (VII), "Describe your village" (VIII), "What do you want to do when you grow up" (X), "How do you spend your summer?" (XI), and "Once upon a time in Tramonti" (XII).

8 The latter topic is the only one suggested by the local authorities and the school, whereas all others I suggested myself The Roman numerals indicate from which essay the citations were taken.

9 Cf. van de Loo & Reinhart 1993: 9; Hardmann 1993: 60; Weiss 1995; Drackle 1996.

10 Authors of classical ethnographic childhood studies such as Margaret Mead (1970) have for some time now been accused of considering childhood as a phase, whose major value is to be overcome on the way to adulthood (Weiss 1995). Contemporary social scientific studies on childhood on the other hand are remarkable in their pessimistic predictions. Debates about modemization ( e.g. du Bois Reymond 1994 ), commercialization (Glogauer 1993), the disappearance of childhood (Postman 1982) and critical discussions about isolation (Zeiher & Zeiher 1994), institutionalization and domestication of children's life-worlds (Zinnecker 1990; du Bois Raymond 1994 ) have been predominant in the past two decades.

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Tramonti in narration

Migration, we can gather from the essays, offers an economic perspective, but is nevertheless a highly controversial issue. Migration as children' s plan for the future is not just held in little esteem by adults in Tramonti but is regarded critically by children as well. Especially when the latter are asked "officially" to portray their town history they are unanimous in their negative evaluation ofthis "difficult phenomenon" (Iolanda, 13, XII).

"Emigration has greatly affected our Tramonti," writes Iolanda; it has be­come "a town populated largely by old people" laments 11-year-old Marco (XII). The children all experience over-ageing, depopulation and the disap­pearance of traditional fields oSf work and pattems of life as negative effects of migration, perceptions concurrent with official descriptions. Tizianan, 11, wrote: "A long time ago there were many peasants here. Today there are only a few left and they are old and not young [ ... ] and many fields are no Ionger being tilled- all because ofmigration!" (XII).

The frequency of such phrases indicates that these arguments against mi­gration are included in the school curriculum. In fact, before my first stay in Tramonti, an essay contest on local history titled "Once upon a time in Tra­monti" was initiated in local schools by the county (1995/96). Bonaventura11

reveals the point of the contest in his essay: "The children are to be made aware of the problern of emigration."

The fairy-tale-like title - "Once upon a time ... " - implies a fairy-tale-like past, revealing the officials' intentions to encourage children to identify with the locality. 12 In dealing with the village's past, a local affinity wastobe cre­ated in the present, thus combatting further migration. The local tourist or­ganization prolocco supports such endeavours. lt wants to invigorate local tra­ditions to promote tourism and thus achieve independence from remittances sent by migrants.

Despite their positive image of the north the children meet these demands in their essays, describing highly imaginatively a (long lost) mythic period of flourishing prosperity: "The families were numerous and there was no lack of work force in the many booming sectors. Small industries, different trades and professions developed. Innumerable cows stood in the cowshed and each fam­ily eamed enough to survive by selling the milk they produced" (Romina, 13, XII).

12-year-old Sylvia also traces the origin of the name monti lattari (Milk Mountains) - indicating the surrounding mountains- to this mythical period in which huge herds grazed on the slopes around Tramonti and "diligence" and "industriousness" were "the fundamental characteristics of the people of Tramonti" (XII). Similarly, Annalisa, 12, writes: "They were industrious peo-

11 Some chi1dren did not give their age, but all chi1dren were between 11 and 14 when writing the essays.

12 This interpretation was confirmed by severa1 of the officia1s when I asked them about the intentions ofthe contest.

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p1e, bound to their traditions full of re1igious va1ues [ ... ] a mountain peop1e that valued brotherhood and 1ove. And the main thing that has prevented pro­gress in the village is emigration!" (XII).

The chi1dren create paradise-1ike pasts in their stories. "Intimes 1ong gone by one cou1d meet peop1e here with pure hearts free of the manifo1d prob1ems that p1ague humanity today" (Matteo, 14, XII).

Considering this diction, it is unnecessary to even attempt to find any sense of historica1 reality. Instead I want to 1ook at the ways in which the sto­ries are to1d. Narrated past is- according to Stuart Hall (1994: 20lff.) - one e1ement in the process by which communities, common cu1ture and identity are conceptually connected. Transferred to "my fie1d" a "narrated Tramonti" is 1aid down in the histories presented which ascribes meanings, symbo1s, events and myths to the town- points of reference for a common identity .13

The task of writing a narrative account of Tramonti, is - to use the notions of 1ate-modem cu1tura1 theory -an appea1 to constmct 1oca1 identity discur­sive1y. The historica1 mode1s constmcted by the chi1dren - the "historical Tramonti" - is as much a product of their experiences and imaginations as their image of "the north" of which we have already heard. Both are a product of experiencing and tack1ing migration.

Not only past prosperity but also its 1oss (through migration) is a centra1 motif in these 1oca1 historica1 discourses. Marianna writes that the o1d trades and agricu1ture have "disappeared more or 1ess comp1ete1y" and are "practi­cally non-existent today" as a resu1t of migration (XII). 14 But how do we in­terpret the following statement, made by 14-year-o1d Giuseppe? "Emigration is to b1ame for," he begins, and continues 1isting the common images of 1oss. He then concludes his statement with the words" the fact that I will buy my­se1f a nice car!" (XII).

Binary discourses

The chi1dren clearly assess migration ambiva1ently and switch between con­denmation and idealization. Two discourses and two different know1edge pro­fi1es exist side by side.

13 Hall describes the narration of nations in his essay. This narration creates a link between locales and landscapes and the events, symbols and myths, which repre­sent shared worries and triumphs and provide specific locations with meanings, that become fixed in people's memories as the common points of reference for a common identity (Hall 1994: 202).

14 The children follow the arguments of the Tramontini Franciscan friar Salvatore Fierro. He is considered the official local historian and his numerous publica­tions, titled, for example, "Tradizioni ehe scompaiono" (Dissappearing tradi­tions, 1989) can be found in nearly every living room, church and store in Tra­monti.

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"Emigration is to blame for everything" (Tiziana, 11, XII). "[It is] a difficult phenomenon that has struck our Tramonti!" (Jolanda, 13, XII). "[. .. ] the entire country must thus stand up to fight it, [ ... ] this exasperating phe­nomenon!" (Bonaventura, XXI).

L 'emigrazione is in their narratives a diffuse, threatening figment that has be­fallen the community like a natural catastrophe or - the narratives being pro­duced in Italy after all- like a grand political conspiracy.

The "responsibility" of which everyone speaks, (responsibility for loss, poverty, over-ageing etc.) is not attributed to the migrating individuals, to the relatives whom the children feel attached to and from whose remittances their families profit, but to a catastrophic, yet abstract and umelated process of emigration. Individual people rarely appear in the children's narratives. In­stead, yet another motif is employed when dealing with the responsibility of migration as a condemnable process: "It is above all the young people that leave the village" writes Pascuale (XII). And Francesca, Fiorina, Gina, Maria and Sonia say that "to stop migration we need to make the youth understand that when they, who are the soul and future of the village, leave, when the youth of this village, which is ours, but also theirs, continue to leave, then it will never change" (XII).

The authors of this petition to the "youth" - between 11 and 14 years of age - seemingly do not consider themselves part of this group of young peo­ple. The village is "ours, but also theirs," they petition (a little moralizing, as if spoken by authoritative adults) the anonymaus- the other- group ofyouth. They themselves ("we") are not part of those considered endaugering Tra­manti through migration.

Whenever migration is critically discussed in public it is related to an anonymaus group of "migrants." When youth debate in abstract terms about youth' s lack of responsibility, they reproduce the official lesson learned at school - and illustrate the results as a disaster with all their imaginative skill. But it is not the relatives in the north, of whom the children speak. They ap­pear in the narratives only when dealing with positive aspects of migration­which is then no longer labelled as emigrazione either. After Giuseppe, 14, described the loss of the past glory of Tramonti (tutto per la colpa de 'll emi­grazione - "emigration as at fault for everything"), he concludes that he him­self has planned his career as a pizza baker in the north, "[ ... ] since I can earn a lot of money there and with this money I will buy myself a nice car!" (XII).

Children engage in two discourses simultaneously. The official discourse represents the institutionalized doctrine which was established by local au­thorities and which is taught at school. It emphasizes the negative results of migration and aims at strengtherring the local economy and local identity. The informal - and less official - discourse deals with the subjects of migration, with relatives and friends, personal relationships, but also with dependencies, needs and desires.

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These two discourses are each founded on different knowledge; and bio­graphy studies has argued15 that knowledge of past events is in fact "change­able." In our example a "counter knowledge," which is closer to actual per­formance and more subject-centred can be found opposite official knowledge. Fragments of this "counter knowledge" can be detected even in C'era una volta Tramanti ("Once upon a time in Tramonti"), where joining the official discourse is called for. Marianna explains: "Life in Tramonti was in fact very difficult since one had to work all day to eam the minimum necessary to sm­vive. This life of privation forced the population into emigration (XII)." And even today, life in Tramonti is not easy and offers little pleasure. "Many Tra­montini who live in the north want to go back to Tramonti," says Filomena, "but what are they to do in a town with nothing?" (XII).

From the point of view of the children, emigration in the sense of "leav­ing/abandoning" is bad, but most children agree that the migrants returning for summer vacation bring - in addition to their financial resources - good things to Tramonti as well. "I live in Corsano, a small harnlet of Tramonti and I have many friends who retum from the north in the summer; we have a lot of fun on the marketplace, we play and ride together on our bicycles and buy ice cream. In the evening I wash, eat and then I go to some party with my par­ents," reports 13-year-old Patrizia (XI). 11-year-old Benito writes: "Tramonti is really nice in the summer, the saint' s days festivals take place then because the people who emigrated to the north organize them when returning for the summer" (XI), and Angelo, 11, writes: Then "the tourists come from the north and from foreign countries, Germany and Venezuela and populate il Pendolo [his hamlet] again. Usually we are only 50 people, but in the summer we are more than 100" (XI).

The otherwise deserted squares and bars swarm with people and often the APE, the three-wheeled carts ofthe grandparent generation, are parked beside the Ferraris of their children from the north. These weeks spent together are nonetheless not just intended to demonstrate the achieved wealth of the mi­grants. Gioacchino, 12, puts it this way: "In the summer, Tramonti is revolu­tionized" (XI). 16

These stories are not about "migrants," even though it is them whom the children are talking about. For some, they are "tourists," for others "friends" from the north who "repopulate" the town and make it more pleasant, organiz­ing parties and livening up Tramonti, as Stefani, 12, says. She then goes out with relatives from far away "almost every evening. Summer in Tramonti is very lively because the village is repopulated with relatives from far away. I

15 Cf. Alheit 1989: 139ff. 16 Gioacchino argues: "In the summer, Tramanti is revolutionized because the tour­

ists and especially those from the north organize many parties and footbaU tour­naments for us children and for their parents. When my friend Anthonio comes, we horse araund tagether in the village square; then we go to the sea and horse araund even more."

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have fun because my aunt and my cousins usually come to visit; we play to­gether, go to the sea and go out almost every night" (XI).

Y oung women and girls in particular greet these effects of the migration process, which the official canon might tend to look down upon. While the latter tends to oppose the disappearance of traditions as a result of migration, the girls welcome the fact that some "traditional" norms are seen less rigidly by their relatives from the north. 14-year-old Paola explains: "The boys have many more opportunities to have fun than the girls. I have a friend, who, when she asks if she can come along for a walk, has to take her brother along be­cause her parents have a completely antiquated mentality" (XI). Her friend Umberta, 14, writes:

There are still parents here with completely antiquated mentalities, who do not want to let you go out, out of fear that when a boy sees you on the street, he won't be able to go past without asking you to marry him. Then there are parents, who let you go out, but only to mass and you have to retum directly after it has finished and in case you are five minutes late, you'll be in trouble. The people need to understand that the world has changed! (XI).

Many girls are very decisive in their demands for more personal liberties and changes in the infamous mentalila antica. 17 Contacts with the "tourists" from the north offer many of them the opportunity to share the (female) migrants' more elaborate freedom of movement and action, however limited the time may be. 13-year-old Annunziata explains how daily life changes when rela­tives visit:

Normally I have to stay at home every day [ ... ] do chores into the evening and not go out. It is not so bad in the summer. Then my brothers come from the north and I can stay with them. I have a lot of fun because they are so nice and so funny. In the eve­nings I stay with them until midnight and then I go home. The summer is a nice time ofyear because you meet many people and get to know them and I like it very much tobe tagether with new people (XI).

These freedoms are all normally forbidden. Gioacchinos description of a "revolutionized" Tramonti is confirmed by Chiara, 14: "Every summer is a sweet memory for me because I enjoyed more freedom" (XI). These liberties are nevertheless only permitted in the company of people who live outside the town but are inside the family. The family is the most important social struc­ture in Tramonti and also functions as a surveillance group; when Annunziata is out with her cousins, she remains within the sphere of family control. Per­ceptions of femininity as something that needs to be guarded, and of men

17 One of the boys of the same age also commented on traditional gender roles, al­though he himself, as a ragazzo, was little affected by their negative aspects. His comments are thus of a different nature: "W omen, especially in the south are still tied to the hausehold because of ancient traditions and are thus less free than elsewhere. Men, on the other hand, have firm control over women" (IX).

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obliged to assume this responsibility also exist in the north, but they seem to be more open to change.

Y oung women, in any case, expect to gain more liberties with migration. In many cases they have completed school or professional training but are not able to find work in Tramonti. Patrizia, 23, studied law and would like to work in the north. However, she does not want to leave her parent' s hausehold unmarried and her decision to leave would only be accepted by her family, if it were organized within customary parameters. For women this means mar­riage with someone from the north, preferably a Tramontino.

She is ambivalent in her assumption of the situation. She disagrees with getting married only to meet the conditions for female migration, even more so as the role of wife and mother would leave her with just as little time to practice as a lawyer in the north as in Tramonti. Ideally, she would like to get married with a man from the north out of love, then emigrate to live with him and thus be able to work in her own profession as well.

The opportunities migration offers young men and women from Tramonti have already been heavily "traditionalized". Y oung men work as pizza bakers in the ristoranti of their relatives; young women largely remain in the sphere of reproduction. Thus, migration is not a decision for or against traditional gender roles. On the contrary, these roles determine the modalities of migra­tion. Nevertheless, migration to the north allows young women in particular to challenge and modify traditional gender more so than in Tramonti. Reforming the "antiquated mentality" seems easier with relocation, which is, of course, only considered to be temporary. 18

The claim that migration destroys tradition, as made in the official dis­course in Tramonti, is thus not correct. Traditions are in fact reproduced in the process of migration which is largely controlled by traditionally powernd in­formal institutions, namely the families. These make use of traditional gender role pattems and rituals (such as marriage) in steering migratory processes. And to some extent thinking about one's own migration has become a local tradition in itself. To not want to migrate as a child (for the right reasons) could then at some stage be considered a violation of (farnily) tradition. And once the decision to migrate has been made, a traditional path is to be fol­lowed (migrating to the north, to an uncle, to work in a pizzeria, through mar­riage etc.).

18 Southem Ita1y is considered a classica1 Mediterraneanregion in socia1 sciences, cultura1 - and chi1dren's studies. It's understood as a very "traditiona1" cu1ture, socia1 structures marked by clientelism and religiosity. Cf. the debate about Ita1-ian familismo, which, oscillating between disapprova1 (as in Banfie1d 1958, where it is 1abelled a "mora1 basis of a backward society") and idealization (cf. Schitteck 1979; Baake & Fracassa 1992) has dominated the academic discourse on Ita1y and chi1dhood in Ita1y.

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Migration as tradition

Migration has for a long time been the dominant tradition in Tramonti. The children know this as well, and they are involved intensively in its reproduc­tion. Beside the "story of Tramonti," there's also a "story of migration," al­though this is not told under the topic C'era una volta Tramonti. lt appears when they are asked to describe their town to a tourist. lt also appears in the (other) essays since they knew, these were not going to be marked by their teachers or sent to the county administration. Here the central motif is not one of loss as in the story of Tramonti but one of the "arte della pizza" (the art of the pizza) (Margareta, 14, XI).

"So many have left," writes Massime, 11, "and today they all have a piz­zeria" (VIII). Today the "pizza bakers of Tramonti are famous all around the world and have restaurants in all the big cities ofthe north" (Giosue, 11, VIII). In these stories specific names and individuals are mentioned around whom the children design the founding myth of "the tradition of important pizza bakers from Tramonti" (Maria Pia, 13, XII).

"In 1951 Giordano Luigi from [the hamlet of] Campinola founded the first pizzeria in Northem ltaly which was also the first pizzeria owned by someone from Tramonti. By 1954 he had a whole chain of restaurants, which he en­trusted to his poor relatives from Tramonti, who understood that this was an easy way to eam money!" (Filomena, XI). Others "say the firstemigrantwas Amatruda Aniello from Cesarano who was called Cinquanta because he left in 1950 [ ... ] yet others claim, it was Fierro Giovanni from Pietre. So everyone from Tramonti worked in this new business, even if it required enormous sac­rifice and a lot of responsibility" (Francesco, VIII).

Even if the emigration of these famous ancestors depopulated Tramonti, so the argument, they did manage to make the region world famous. 11 Cinquanta and his contemporaries introduced the world to the symbol of local culture, the pizza.

The motif of the pizza has been institutionalized in the course of time in the Corporazione Pizzaioli di Tramonti, the union of pizza bakers from Tra­manti with statutes, formal membership and, above all, pizza recipes policies. The emblem of the organization carries the motto "The Pizza in tradition -Tramonti all over the world." The local specialty has grown to become an icon of local tradition. The members of the union belong to a transnational com­munity, which on the one hand draws on the common origin of its members from a single town but on the other hand only becomes a community as a re­sult of its collective absence form the latter. Of the 271 founding members (who all have their own restaurant), only five live and work in Tramonti. The union is one of the social institutions that organizes and structures the transna­tional social space of migration. 19 Whether making pizza had always been a specific Tramonti tradition or only became one as a result of the emigration of

19 Cf. Pries 1997.

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many Tramontini - whether it was actually rnigration which 1ed to the inven­tion ofthis 1ocal tradition that is20

- remains open. No doubt, however, that es­tab1ishing the Corporazione Pizzaioli di Tramanti made the profession of the pizza baker acquire 1ocal cu1tural contours and made it a point of reference for 1ocal tradition.

Illustration: Emblem ofthe "Corporazione Pizzaioli di Tramanti"

A who1e series of further symbo1s, stories and institutions exist, which repre­sent the positive aspects of Tramonti's history of migration and which the chi1dren of Tramonti re1ate to with pride. Walking through the ham1et of Cesa­rano in 1997, I met a group of primary schoo1 chi1dren in the street. With exci­ted gestures they 1ed me to the big attraction in the hamlet, the mins of a hou­se destroyed in the big earthquake in 1982, whose walls stood defiant of the traffic on the through road. I adrnired these, somewhat puzz1ed, unti1 the chi1dren showed me a shining p1aque fixed to the wall. lt was, it seems, a sym­bo1ic site of the origins of migration. The p1aque revea1ed that Mario Cuomo' s mother was bom in this house. Mario Cuomo, probab1y the most famous rni­grant from Tramonti, was once govemor of New York State and is today an honorary citizen of Tramonti. His name is se1dom 1eft unmentioned in a con­versation ab out l 'emigrazione.

A magazine for the community of Tramontini around the world was founded in 1988, the TPE or Tramantiper Emigrati, il magazine degli ltaliani

20 Hobsbawn & Ranger 1983.

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nel mondo [tutte le regioni] (Tramonti for emigrants, the magazine of ltalians around the world [all regions])?1

I will now retum once more to the two unequal spheres of knowledge the children express in the two discourses I have designated official and informal. Does their parallelism involve an immanent potential for conflict?

Identities

"I would also like to go north and make pizza," wrote 12-year-old Umberto, "so that I leam so mething and, anyway, to do something. But I can't leave my home and I don't want to either, because I have gardens here, I am alone with my mother and I have to cultivate our gardens. I don't ever want to leave the Costiera Amalfitana" (X).

Are Umberto's conflicting emotions and considerations common among the children of Tramonti? Or, to use the dramatic terms of Italian rhetoric, does the experience of migration leave children with an identita strappata, a disturbed identity?

Migration scholars have indeed debated vehemently about the negative ef­fects of migration on the identity of children. 22 "Bicultural socialization" would mn the risk of children being tom between two cultures (Schrader 1979), making the process of integration and assimilation into the host country more difficult, possibly leading them to develop "marginal personalities" and severe psychological illness as young adults (Branik 1982: 23). Such pessi­mistic assumptions have been challenged repeatedly. 23

"Segmented" (Pries 1997) or "hybrid" identities (Bhabha 1990), which unify contrary segments have long since been understood as not being a priori conflictual. Stuart Hall (1994: 180ff.) understands the postmodern subject as a collection of "several, sometimes Contradietory or umesolved" or "frag­mented" identities. Tomaso Morone describes, for example, how ltalian chil­dren in Germany develop their own differentiated status consciousness as mi­graut children, which helps them to position themselves socially and cultur­ally.24

Despite Umberto's melancholy rhetoric, I share the opinion that the frac­tured knowledge the children have of Tramonti and their own history does not necessarily lead to problems. In over 200 essays, Umberto's was the only one which explicitly mentioned a conflict.

Identity, writes Iain Chambers (1996: 32) is a "fiction," a "particular story that makes sense." In Tramonti, identity is only in danger - to pick up one

21 Applying Pries' model of transnational social space (1997), the TPE could be classified apart ofthe material infrastructure ofthe Tramontini migrant network.

22 Cf. Sehrader 1979; Branik 1982; Wilpert 1980; Marone 1996; Portera 1996. 23 I.e. Wilpert 1980; Marone 1996; Portera 1991, 1995, 1996. 24 Marone 1996: 53.

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question asked initially- when it is allowed to follow a single model or a sin­gle narrative only. The stories told by the children of Tramonti grow out of an experience which encompasses more than one centre, and more than one sys­tem ofknowledge. They develop in the process of encounter, in a space which despite being shared by closely interrelated family members reveals gaps and room for manoeuvre. In these gaps other stories, languages, and identities can be experienced.

The experience of this social space between Tramonti and the north en­ables the children to find their way and localize themselves in a heterogeneaus world which comprises ofboth the local culture, i.e. the localized traditions of Tramonti and a delocalized environment which exists in the context of migra­tion and its specific traditions, transregional migrant economics and which connects them to the ways of global culture. Or, as Christina, daughter of one of many ltalian restauraut owners in Germany said to me: "Identity? Horne? Well, I don't have either- no, wait, actually both, there the north, Germany and here ltaly, that is my home!"

Conclusion

The children of Tramonti "write" migration. In their essays they create their own versions of local history, which clearly includes moments of ambiva­lence. However, in no way can these narratives be reduced to the conflict po­tential concealed in them. More than inner conflict these stories reveal how creatively the children of Tramonti deal with their heterogeneaus environ­ment.

They manage to weave together two apparently contrary discourses. On the one hand they energetically reproduce the official discourse depicting mi­gration as a critical issue, as the cause of many misfortunes. With a great deal of imagination, mythicallocal histories and motifs of loss are created and so­lutions sought and suggested (e.g. the reproduction oftradition for the benefits oftourism). L 'emigrazione is viewed as a threatening fiend raging in Tramonti like a natural catastrophe, independent of individual actors.

On the level of personal relations an informal discourse dominates. lt is about subjects and their needs and desires, their successes, relationships, role models and friends. A lucrative life in the cosmopolitan north is confronted with a difficult life in the old and beautiful, but somewhat boring Tramonti.

But this does not remain a simple unanchored contrast. Emigration may have "severely damaged our old Tramonti" but now it is the migrants who "beautify" the town, "enliven" and even "revolutionize" it where it is domi­nated by antiquated mles. Migration connects the remote town in the moun­tains (tra i monti) with the wider world. The migrants, who come from every farnily in Tramonti and who have officially been given the role of having de­stroyed the town thus become as good and as important as those, who remain in the town and acquire, if not equal, at least close to equal status positions.

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I consider this the specific contribution of the children to the development of a balanced system of social relationships within their personal environ­ment.25 The local ties of those who remain in the town and their knowledge and feelings about traditional cultural resources are seen as "cultural capital" equivalent to the "economic capital" of the migrants from the north.

The traditions ofthe patrimonio culturale (cultural heritage) and migration processes are not automatically mutually exclusive. Traditional gender roles for example, are both reproduced as well as transformed by migration. The is­sue is not one of two completely separate worlds - a traditional Tramonti on the one hand and a modern or global world of migration on the other. Both "worlds" are closely and inseparably intertwined in the subjects and their ex­periences. lt is above all an issue of two economic strategies - migration, which has long become a tradition in Tramonti - versus the late-modem idea of making "tradition" itself an economic location factor by reviving or, if nec­essary, inventing traditions. This strategy followed by the county with the support of the schools, is closely related to the marketing tactics of the global tourism industry. 26

Many children demonstrate in their essays that they see through the broader intentions of the project, i.e. the revival of traditions and their eco­nomic potentials. Several participants in the contest mention marketing strate­gies right away, their essays sounding like contributions to a publicity cam­paign. Federico, 14, articulately connects local identity and tourism. The "good-humoured" and "happy" mentality of the Tramontini - a result of the breathtaking natural environment- should be seen as a true incentive for tour­ism he claims.

The air that one breathes here and the smell of the spring flowers flatters the spirit like good news. Everyone is happy and this happiness is passed on to the people who visit this picturesque town every year. Tramanti is blessed with so many beauti­ful things, the mountains, the agriculture, and the farnaus pizza bakers in the north and finally the hospitality, which reveals the pleasant nature and the charm of the Tramontini all over the world (XII).

Frederico demonstrates that the pizza, the symbol of the migrants bears a quality that makes it highly attractive in the context of tourist promotion. The

25 Pries (1997) describes the balanced "third system or social positioning" oftraus­national social spaces. However, literature on Southem Italy has to date often been surprisingly simplistic in its analysis. Speculations about the jealously and resentment felt by villagers who do not profit from the migration of their neighbours figure prominently. Behrmann & Abate (1984: 57) consider migra­tion the most radical instrument of social differentiation. From time to time gen­erally "intemalised attitudes [ ... ] of resentment and jealously," e.g. of Sicilian migrants are debated ( cf. Zimmermann 1982: 129). Faith in the system of social security through migration and the example of migrating relatives seems to be more important in Tramonti, among children especially.

26 On late-modem tourism strategies see Cohen 1995; Errington & Gewertz 1989; Nash 1996.

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migration of the pizzaioli di Tramontini simply needs tobe added as an offi­cial narrative of success to the list of local traditions in Tramonti.

lt has long been so for the children. Tramonti could market itself as a tra­ditional mountain town and as a centre of a global migrant network, as the capital of pizza bakers from around the world, a stone' s throw away from the breathtaking Amalfi coast. "If we try," says 12-year-old Simone, "Tramonti could soon become a little Switzerland" (XII).

Despite the danger of provoking a somewhat too enthusiastic conclusion, I close this essay with Simone's prediction. lt demonstrates how in their narra­tives of their town and migrants the children of Tramonti prove to be highly creative, imaginative and critical ( co )designers of their world.

This paper was translated from German to English by Andreas Hemming.

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BELONGINGS OF YOUNG HAITIAN IMMIGRANTS

IN MONTREAL

Heike Drotbohm

lntroduction

While the role fulfilled by music in the construction of personal and ethnic identities has received significant attention in recent anthropologicalliterature, the perspective of children and young people has been widely neglected. The culture of hip-hop1 in particular, with its group dynamics, competitive ele­ments as well as its spirit of resistance against the world of adults constitutes a reflective tool for children and young people. The identification with this youth culture serves as a significant means for the (re-)creation of "black" tra­dition and ethnicity. From the moment it became understood as a vehicle for the "voices from the margins" (Rose 1994) just over 10 years ago, the interest in hip-hop within academia has become more established, mainly in the United States and in Canada,2 but also in Europe3 and other parts of the world.4

My fieldwork focused on the Haitian community in Montreal, Canada, and how it recreated "Haiti." I was particularly interested in the reconstruction of Haitian history and gender ideologies within the migrant community and in discovering how it relates to both home and host society.5 From the beginning of the 1990s, much research has been carried out on the first generation of Haitian immigrants, mainly to the United States, and they provided one ofthe most significant case studies in the development of the concept of "transna­tionalism" (Glick Schilleret al. 1992, Basch et al. 1994). By means of physi-

While the culture of hip-hop consists of rap music, breakdance, graffiti and dj­ing, rap music has shaped urban black youth cultures most significantly all over the globe. This article will concentrate on the analysis ofrap songs.

2 Kage 2002; Lipsitz 1999; Ross & Rose 1994. 3 Klein & Friedrich 2003; Memath 2001. 4 Auzanneau 2001; Kimmirrich 2004; Weller 2003. These authors have been work­

ing on rap music in Gabon, Senegal, and Brazil, respectively. 5 Data was collected during my Ph.D. fieldwork in Montreal (2002, 2003). I thank

the University of Marburg, Germany for supplying me with a doctoral grant and the Centre d'Etudes Ethniques, CEETUM, at the University of Montreal, for their support during my stay in Montreal.

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cal movement, personal networks and political ideologies, Haitians in Mont­reallive their lives as transmigrants, commuting between "home" and host so­ciety. In doing so, they forge and sustain multiple social relations that link Haiti with Haitian Settlements - within Canada and in other parts of the world, i.e. Paris, Miami, New York City or Boston.

The city of Montreal has attracted 80 per cent of all new immigrants in the Province of Quebec in recent decades and immigrants make up between 20 to 25 per cent of the metropolitan area population today (Meintel 2000: 15). An estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Haitians have come to Montreal since the mid 1950s. They were fleeing political persecution, stmctural violence and la mize - the increasing poverty in one of the poorest countries in the westem hemi­sphere (Dejean 1990).

I was interested in the differing and sometimes conflicting perspectives within Haitian families in Montreal, i.e. in the differences in attitudes, inter­ests and needs with regard to gender and generation. The following artide aims at exploring how children in particular perceive and define their position between Haiti as their parents' reference culture, and Canada as their host so­ciety, a society within which they are labelledas immigrants, in spite of hav­ing been bom there. Writing about "Haitian children" in Montreal, I mainly refer to children belanging to the second, in some cases third generation of Haitian immigrants - that is the children and, in some cases the grandchildren of former immigrants. 6

I will focus on the following questions: How do children perceive their position betwixt and between? How do they construct an ethnic identity? Is ethnic identity important to their concept of self? Which roles do home and host society play in the process of shaping children's identities? Finally: what role does rap music play in the constmction of self among young Haitian im­migrants?

Haitian families and identities in Montreal

The Haitian Community in Montreal falls into two broad categories, which mn parallel to dass and race differentiations rather typical for post-slavery­societies. 7 There are working dass and "undocumented labourers" on the one hand, and skilled middle-dass professionals working as teachers, doctors or nurses, on the other. Generally speaking, the former group tends to live on the margins of society, with little opportunity for upward social mobility while the latter is better off financially and also tends to be more comfortable with its

6 Most of them are officially Canadian citizens; few have not been "naturalized" and remain Haitian citizens. Cf. Mannitz in this volume, who is pinpointing the problern of labeHing children and grandchildren of former immigrants as "sec­ond and third generations of immigrants."

7 SeealsoBaschetall994: 183-198; Waters2001.

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Haitian heritage. 8 Many Haitians refer to their children as "wealth,"9 since children - particularly among Haitian inuuigrants - are supposed to fulfill the expectations and desires of their parents. 1° Family life tends to engender strong challenges for all, more so in families with poor working dass back­ground, where both parents are forced to work fulltime. On the whole, par­ents' perception of life in Canada differs from children's perception. Flore zephir describes the trauma, fmstrations and disappointments many Haitians face upon arrival in Canada. For months and often years, most first-generation immigrants have to come to terms with low-paid jobs, prejudice and little op­portunity for upward social mobility, as well as with linguistic and cultural barriers. On top ofthat they often fear to lose their children to what they con­sider to be a foreign cultural world - Canada that is. At the same time, their children, by means of rapid acculturation and acquisition of langnage skills acquire the role of "experts" whom they depend upon. This paradoxical ine­quality often produces fmstration on the parents' part, fmstration that some­times results in child abuse. 11

Haitian children in Montreal are highly diversified as a group and indude those bom and raised in Canada as well those who were bom in Haiti but came to Canada at an early age. Like the first generation of Haitian inuui­grants, they are stratified in terms of social dass, which in turn affects their ethnic identifications. By and large, children from a middle-dass background tend to daim a certain degree of Haitianness, which is expressed by dedaring pride in one's Haitian roots. Those children show a preference for a Haitian Iifestyle and participate in Haitian social activities at home or within their eth­nic community. Be it their culinary preferences, their choice of music or their religious affiliations- Haiti serves as a source of ethnic identification. 12

There are also weaker forms of Haitianness, which zephir (200 1: 99) calls the "undercover phenomenon." lt means hiding one's Haitian roots by passing as an African Canadian. These children speak inner-city Black English, many of the girls wear short skirts, the boys wear baggy pants and gold chains. Alex Stepick (1998: 60) calls this response "cultural suicide", which he daims tobe the result of the continuous confrontation of Haitian children and youth with negative stereotypes about their own group. They are accused of being prone to gang violence and dmg abuse, of being dirty and smelly, and, most se­verely, HIV positive. 13

8 Zephir 2001: 146. 9 "Timoun yo ce canet barre malere," translated as "the child is the bank account of

the poor," is a common Haitian proverb. 10 Stepick 1998: 22; Zephir 2001: 50. 11 Stepickl998:23;Zephir2001: 125-145. 12 Potvin 1999. 13 In the 1980s and 1990s the North American media spread the message that the

HIV/Aids-transmitting risk groups consisted ofthe "Four Hs"- Heroin addicts, Haemophiliacs, Homosexuals, and Haitians (Richman 1992: 192; Stepick 1998: 35).

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These two different strategies of identification serve as my frame of analy­sis. While the rap songs I am dealing with have been produced by Haitian university students with middle-class backgrounds, the children I worked with in order to understand the perception of these songs live in a poor working class area of Montreal. I will try to show how through hip-hop, group soli­darity and community consciousness is (re-)produced and differences between these two groups of young Haitian immigrants are levelled out.

Moune morne: The people from the mountains

In the following case study I will present one of the most popular hip-hop groups in Quebec, called "Muzion- moune mome." Their first album, "men­talite moune mome - ils n' ont pas compris," appeared in 1999, the second, 'TRevolutionne," in 2003. The group is composed of four rappers of Haitian descent- two female and two male. Since the mid 1990s, Muzion, who rap in French, English and Haitian Creole, have gained a lot of respect and "street cred"14 among children and youth of Haitian origin in Montreal. All members of the group have a middle-class background. J Kyl, for instance, one of the female members, was studying law at one ofMontreal's universities and inter­mpted her studies in order to concentrate on her musical career. She and the three other members view hip-hop as an educative tool. They work in close contact with their local community, St. Michel, and invite children and youth to participate in their projects. Thus, through their music, they get in touch with the local population.

The following excerpt from the song "rien a perdre" demonstrates some of their ideas.

Rien a perdre- Nothing to lose15

Not one day without a song How many teil me: 'you would have made a good lawyer, what went wrong?'

But I have an artistic soul, a spirit too mystic, nearly autistic for the lyrics unconstrained, I chose rap to live my rebellion

Displaying my poems, making them run under an amazing beat Hip-Hop does forme everything that the rest won't do

Gives me 3 times 16 bars of noise, which beats at the head ofthose, who otherwise wouldn't Iisten to me

I keep the kids off ofthe street, they're running to my music I make them hear my voice so loud, in public

Represent the oppressed, you say that's bullshit? But how many raise their arms when I take the mic' for rhyming.

14 "Street cred" ( abrev.) = "street credibility ," one of the main concepts of Hip­Hop-Culture.

15 Excerpt from "rien a perdre," from the album "mentalite moune mome," 1999 (my translation). Seeappendix for alloriginal song versions.

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During the two sunuuers of my fieldwork in Montreal, Muzion's songs were played all day long on the local ethnic music stations. Children and young people also sang their songs at festivals, parties and other private events. Nearly every Haitian child I talked to knew Muzion- their story, their music and their messages. In using the three languages of their environment, Muzi­on's songs describe life under Montreal's plurilingual urban conditions. They constantly employ code-switching and langnage borrowing and maintain symbolic references of identification.

In order to understand the relevance of hip-hop for children, one needs to consider its function in group dynamics and conuuunication. Alison James hints to the importance of group dynamics for children, who leam to negotiate the conflicting cultural demands between individuality and conformity within their peer-groups. She furthermore declares "talk" to be the primary medium of social exchange among children. Children' s habits of talking and playing with words describe the inherent codes, which relate to specific categories of thoughts (James 1995: 59-60). Thus, it is not surprising that rap music in par­ticular can serve as a source of empowerment and inspiration, given that it works with specific codes, linguistic varieties, mixings and neologisms. 16

Both aspects, peer-group dimensions and their communicative skills, help children to advance from childhood to adolescence, from a more private way of life within the family to a more social way of life in the wider conuuunity. In many societies institutions such as the family, school, churches or youth as­sociations help children through this phase of transition. However, as a result of the specific conditions mentioned above, in many Haitian families these in­stitutions hardly exist, much less function. Instead, it is hip-hop's group di­mensions that provide spaces for ritualizing the transition from childhood to adolescence. In all my interviews with children in Montreal, specific hip-hop­groups, i.e. their "crews" and "posses" served as a local source of identity and group affiliation within the "hoods."17 As such they also function as a substi­tute for the missing or inadequate family support system. Hip-hop also serves children' s competitive needs. They can compare their agility and skill, their strength and endurance. 18 In rap-music, breakdance and graffiti "battles," they aim at judging each other's creativity, originality and innovative potentials. 19

As mentioned, the four members of Muzion have a strong attachment to their community and feel responsible for Haitian children in the streets. In one of my interviews with J Kyl, she explained to methat the term "moune mor­ne" or "mornier" referred to the maroons, the slaves who had fled the sugar plantations two centuries ago and continued their lives as rebels in the moun­tains of Haiti. While in Haiti the term is employed to describe poor peasants

16 On the use of local vemaculars within rap music, see also Auzanneau 2001. 17 From "neighbourhood," also used in French and Haitian Creole. 18 Regarding children's desire for competitive occasions, seealso Hardmann 1993:

73-76. 19 Rose 1994:41-61.

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living in the rural areas, in Montreal, many Haitian parents use it to let their children know that they consider their manners uncivilized and wild. Muzion, however, use the term in a positive way, J Kyl explained and confessed proud­ly: "Y es, I am mornier, yes, I will fight for my freedom, yes, I live like a peas­ant, because I am not materialistic."20

In this statement, two main aspects of children' s and young people' s iden­tity constmctions are pin-pointed: they define themselves as opposed to their parent's world, which they experience as intimidating and hostile, and they re­fer to Haitian history and to heroes of the Haitian revolution - the latter seiV­ing as role models.

Thus, "farnily conflicts" on the one hand and "black power" on the other are experienced as major issues in the sociallives of Haitian children and ser­ve as focal points of reference with regard to identity construction. In the fol­lowing I will analyze some of Muzion' s songs, focusing on these two major themes. During my inteiViews with the children, the lyrics of Muzion' s songs seiVed as a point of entry to discuss their perspectives and attitudes concem­ing these issues.

The seven children I mainly talked to were between 10 and 14 years of age and lived in St. Michel, a multi-ethnic working-class quarter of Montreal.21

The following descriptions and citations result from two meetings organized by Muzion, who knew the children through their own project activities?2 We met in a public park, where we sat on the ground, listening to Muzion's songs on a small CD-player. We listened to a couple of songs, the children singing the lyrics or humming the melodies. Then I interrupted the music and we dis­cussed the songs' messages. 23

20 This and all following children's statements have been translated from French/ Haitian Creole into English.

21 Except from the members of Muzion, all names mentioned in the text are pseu­donyms.

22 The members of Muzion were interviewed separately and did not take part in the meetings with the children.

23 While all the following songs have been translated from a mix ofFrench/Haitian Creole/English into English, I would like to point out that translations of rap­songs tend to remain partly inadequate. Rappers often produce abstract stories with catchy phrases, storing fragments of associative allusions. Rap langnage contains images, ideas and icons, which encompass re-contextualizations that emerge from dialogues between rap musicians and those who listen to their mu­Slc.

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Family conflicts

L'education- Education24

An alcoholic father, a choleric son with a devil's look All alone, without accomplices, getting furious, hitting too easily.

A mother, selling her body, a girl, stretching her body easily In the bed of a pig, the first night, he takesher out

An abusive father disrespecting his wife, his son disrespecting his mother Ephemeral authority and his mates applauding.

The family, first source of all our actions, The most beautiful thing or the most ugly,

depending on whether or not there's love involved in our education.

Tel pere, tel vice- Such father, such shame25

A naive life of 10 years Depressive mother, absent father, dictator style, cutting looks

What's wrong, son? Say you're afraid! He's bringing fear to the whole house He's getting even morebrutal by the timehe has to pay the rent, the bills

What a mess, nobody is langhing anymore, when the door-bell rings. The mother sets up the table, the child running to bed

Lying under the covers, cramping, this jerk of a father Might come to play with him, his hands in his pants ...

Refrain: Afterall you've dorre wrong, you want me to forgive you? You say you love me? How dare you forget the past!

I don't believe you when you say you're sorry.

Muzion touch upon the issue of family and intergenerational conflicts in many of their songs. "L'education," among other songs, accuse parents of inade­quate communication vis-a-vis their children. Muzion develop an image of au­tistic, violent and isolated fathers, who long for other worlds and other wo­men, and an image of mothers, who lose their identity in their day-to-day wor­ries about their jobs and their children' s lives. Lack of respect and self-control on both sides, the songs tell us, teaches children violent worldviews and sexu­alized modes of behaviour.

In my discussions with the children they confirmed this general picture and described severe conflicts within their families, between their parents as well as between parents and children. The children claimed most of the ten­sion and quarrels in Montreal's Haitian families resulted from their parent's fmstration on the one hand and their own desire for more freedom and less control on the other. Particularly their fathers suffered from the unexpected changes that result out of unemployment, low social and economic status and the loss of authority. Tom, a boy of thirteen years said: "It's tme what they say. Normally it's important, the respect; sure one has to respect the other. But

24 Excerpt from "l'Education," from the Album "mentalite moune mome," 1999 (my translation).

25 Excerpt from "Tel pere, tel vice," from the Album "mentalite moune mome," 1999 (my translation).

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at the same time it's not only me, who is obliged, it's also my parents, they also have to have respect. And that's whatthey say, Muzion."

In his explanation Tom refers to the fact that Haitian children in Montreal profit from a more permissive educational system in Canada but at the same time suffer because their parents nevertheless try to raise their children ac­cording to Haitian traditions of strict generational hierarchies.

The issue of sexual abuse was another difficult topic which came up. Again, Muzion' s lyrics helped me to imagine the violent conditions many Haitian children face and my young interviewees to discuss their fears and suspicions. When I read the lyrics of "Tel pere, tel vice" to them, Emile, a 10-year-old boy, started talking about his elder brother. He left his family a cou­ple of years ago to join one of the local street gangs that roam the streets of Montreal-Nord and St. Michel making a living from dmg dealing and caJjack­ing. Sometimes when they meet, Emile and hisbrother talk about the situation at home and about the brother' s desire to re-start an ordinary life and continue school. Emile said the situation at home got even worse after his brother had left, because his father felt ashamed of his son' s gang activities and, according to Emile, at times even hid or denied his elder son's existence: "lt's the sever­est punishment for my father, that my brother went away and lives his life. But it's true: sometimes my father is like a dictator; that scares me. I under­stand my brother, but I miss him a lot."

Emile uses the song to talk about his feelings, such as his fear of violence and his solitude. When discussing the lyrics, most of the children agreed with Emile's negative perception about their everyday lives at home and started talking about their experiences. They all longed for a less conflict laden "home," i.e. a place of security and refuge. Most of them, girls as well as boys, felt closer to their mothers than to their fathers, since the former showed a lot more interested in their children's lives. Vanessa, aged 12, complained that the only issue her father would talk about was Haiti. Even though her fa­ther has lived in Canada for more than 20 years, she said, he was obsessed by the idea of eventually returning there. And she added: "Sometimes that scares me, because I do not know anything about Haiti and I know that there' s much criminality over there." Vanessa felt threatened by the idea of having to "re­tum" to a country she does not know. A couple of other children also men­tioned their parents had never started a reallife in Canada, but remained fully attached to their horneland instead. These different ties - the parents being at­tached to their home country, their children feeling more at home in their host society - are a common phenomenon within immigrant families in general?6

The children' s narrations made this gap mnning through Haitian immigrant farnilies very apparent.

Both songs discussed here carry different images and judgements concem­ing mothers and fathers. When I touched this issue, it quickly became clear that gender plays an important role in the perception of family conflicts. Myr-

26 Rumbaut & Portes 2001: 6.

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lene, aged 14, explained, that only Haitian fathers acted in such a violent man­ner, while Haitian mothers generally felt much more attached to their children. She told us that she was happy to know that her mum would never take her to Haiti, but would always stay in Canada with her children. V anessa agreed, saying her mother would never leave Canada either because she wanted her children to get a good education. She witnessed many violent conflicts in her family as well, but knew her mother would either try to calm down her father or would leave him one day to live on her own with her children, as many Haitian women in Montreal have already done.

Other girls mentioned that since their parents lived according to Haitian traditions and values, they treated girls and boys differently. While their brothers were allowed to stay out even at night, girls would be much more controlled. Eve, aged 13, mentioned that she felt her mother did not tmst her and had started to observe her even on her way to school to find out whether she had a boyfriend. Referring to the songs, one of the girls said: "For me, with Muzion, I know that they're Haitians, like me, they are blacks, and they live through the same things as we do. Sometimes, in their songs, things be­come clearer. Sometimes, it's strange to see that it's just around the comer. And I talk about it with my friends; it's great to see a Haitian girl talking like that, which is not our parents' ideal!"

Muzion serve as a representation of young and modern Haitians, who do not- and do not want to- live up to their parent's expectations. The two fe­male members of Muzion in particular present an image of Haitian girls in­consistent with Haitian traditions and ideals. Their habit of wearing baggy pants and dreadlocks like their male peers as well as their unbridled perform­ances on stage cause huge concerns among Haitian parents in Montreal. For Haitian children, however, they serve as role models and their attitudes and behaviour are perceived as integral parts of the lives and identities of young Haitians in Montreal.

In summary, by means of discussing two of Muzion's songs dealing with farnily conflicts, four major issues were elucidated as being central to the so­cial lives and identities of Haitian children in Montreal. First, the lack of re­spect both between parents and between parents and children. Second, the is­sue of sexual abuse and violence in general. Third, marked differences in atti­tudes and perspectives between different generations, effecting different ties with regard to home and host society, parents and particularly fathers feeling attached to their home country, children feeling more at home in Canada. Fourth, the parent's reproduction of Haitian gender ideologies and hence, the different treatrnent of girls and boys.

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HEIKE DROTBOHM

Blackpower

J'Revolutionne27

You see one million rowing slaves. That's us! One million children, men and women. Us!

Without chains, without the lash ofthe whip. That's what makes us move: the fury in our souls, that's us!

Humanity which crosses ebony and ivory, that's us! A whole army of oppressed, who yell 'war'

Who are tired ofbeing the ridiculous mass! White or black W e take back our power

But who zombified me, confiscated my spirit. .. Tarne? Only when this written dream can live, I will stay here without hope ...

I don't have any tears left when I cry We don't mind the scandal

I dream the revolution Boukman28 style Wherever I go, I will settle down among ourselves

Hit the volume, beat the tam-tams in the mountains. We're running applauding these guys

Dead! (For to serve us as cover~ Free! ( all saints like Louverture )2

W e will die this time all the same Between ghettos and aristocracy

As long as there's no flag. And too many fatherlands! W e will be nothing but N egroes agairrst Nazis oppressors

As long as we're condemned for our sex, our race, our class, For the god, to whom we pray and whom we worship

As long as my texts harass and annoy the coward Who doesn't understand what we say and the brothers say

Everywhere, in all the countries, decay, They die under the betrayal, the beatings

Where're you from? I am there! We wantwar- And that's all!!!

Black pride, rebellion and violent images about the legacy of slavery are common tropes in hip-hop culture in general and constitute the most important topic in Muzion's songs. Like many other hip-hop groups, they embrace the idea of blackness in ways that parallel the rise of black consciousness in the 1970s in the United States. They popularize an afrocentric movement through lyrics that link the daily problems of racism, economic oppression and black marginality in contemporary American society. 3° Furthermore, they connect

27 Excerpt from the song ''J'revolutionne," from the Album ''J'revolutionne," 2003 (my translation). J'revolutionne, a neologism, could be translated with: I dream the revolution.

28 Boukman was a vodou priest, who inspired the Haitian slaves to rebel agairrst their white masters during the Haitian revolution, a rebellion, which resulted in the declaration ofthe state ofHaiti in 1804, the first independent black nation in the world.

29 Tonssaint Louverture was a soldier during the Haitian revolution, who managed to unite the black masses and to mobilize them agairrst their white enemies.

30 Rose 1994:21-34.

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contemporary racial discrimination with the historical experience of slavery, drawing upon both as a source for black rebellion and resistance. Muzion work with explicitly aggressive contents, a common phenomenon in hip-hop­culture.31 In the song discussed here, they do notjust mix French, English and Haitian Creole, but also interweave cultural elements originating in the Afri­can American movement in the Americas, from Haiti, and from their distinct youth culture.

As for the reconstruction of a particularly Haitian identity in the diaspora, specifically Haitian symbols are drawn upon - e.g. "Boukman" and "Louver­ture," two Haitian heroes from the Haitian revolution. Their fury and rage are not being addressed primarily to evoke worldwide solidarity among colonred people, but to bring to light historically rooted issues of a particular Haitian relevance and, thus to evoke Haitian ethnicity on a transnationallevel.

I started my discussion with the children by questioning the relevance of the "old" Haitian heroes for the life of a Haitian girl or boy in Montreal today. I asked them whether they knew about these Haitian heroes and whether they had talked about them at home. Tom, aged 13, explained that his parents had told him some things about Haitian history and the slave rebellion, but that he particularly liked the sound and the general atmosphere of the songs: "When I listen to Muzion, I am glad tobe Haitian. Their pride and all that, that's good. Haiti, this is not the same thing for my parents, for Muzion, it's much cooler." He laughed, then raised his arms and shouted "Men Moun Yo!" ["I am here!"].

I also raised the issue of the aggressive tone of the song, asking "What kind of war are they talking about?" Altogether they started giggling and Sammy, a boy of 14, got up, raised his arms and started performing the last part of the song with lucid hip-hop-style movements. Then he sat down again and the children started discussing the importance of those famous rebels and their use of violence for their everyday life. After several minutes of chaotic shouting about, some order returned and Sammy started talking about his ex­periences at school: "We, at school, the blacks, we are rebels too, you see? Sometimes it's like this, we get together, but we're not a street-gang. Anyhow, we' re against the others, we have to fight all the time!"

Sammy relates to one of the common tropes of Caribbean culture, the re­bellious maroon. Referring to "maroon resistance" is calling for class-based solidarity as well as for enduring resistance against the dominating American way of life. Sanuny continues explaining that at school he would always be Haitian, although he's proud to be a Canadian citizen: "Haiti, it is like your mother. Y ou might have your problems with her, you might even fight with

31 For instance, Rose (1994) analyses the way rap and rap-related violence are dis­cussed in popular media, showing how this specific discourse is part of a more general discourse on black people. See also Gilroy (1991: 110), where he decon­structs the media's ideological perspective on black crime.

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her, but you will never leave her, you will be with her all your life, it's biol­ogy, you can't escape it."

Sanuuy' s equation between one' s Haitian descent and the relationship to one' s mother shows that despite ambivalent feelings, ethnic ties are perceived to be like matemal ties, biological and inescapable and thus need to be ac­cepted as such. Moreover, he explained that the main reason why the children at school constantly reminded him of his Haitian descent was the negative im­age Haitians have in Montreal.

The music and lyrics produced by Muzion help him to view Haiti as well as his family in a more positive light. Sanuuy assumed that many black people would be better offtoday ifthey were as courageaus as the Haitian slaves dur­ing the revolution. Indeed, most of the other children I talked to where im­pressed by the radical stance the slaves took and shared a vision of a better life achieved through united resistance and black power.

Particularly the three girls complained that their Quebecois identity was not accepted among many of their white friends. Myrlene explained that she had never really felt Haitian because she grew up mainly with white friends and hardly knew other Haitians. But the day other children made fun of her on account of her skin-colour, she started reflecting upon her Haitian roots. The music, she told me, helped her to find something "Haitian" which was differ­ent from her parents' Haiti, something morepositive and meaningful. Again, this statement implies ambivalence between a negative "Haiti" associated with one's parents and a more positive "Haiti" associated with connotations and meanings, that may serve as a source of identification for oneself. The latter need to be discovered and music is an important means of such discovery.

In order to deepen the analysis of these ambivalent attitudes and feelings, I would like to introduce one more Muzion song - "La Vi Ti Neg" - meaning: "the life of a small nigger." lt depicts miserable living conditions, violence and broken families as part of Haitians' life in the diaspora, but it also pleads for a positive memory of and solidarity with the homeland. Since its release in 1999 this song has become Muzion's most popular hit, which may be the re­sult ofboth its captivating rhythm and its simple message:

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SMALL HEROES. RAP MUSIC AND SELECTIVE BELONGINGS

La Vi Ti N eg - Life of a small nigger32

It' s one love I like the pearl of the Antilies my clan is shininfl As did the folks I who destroyed power in 1804

Black & proud to beI see those people capable To realize that everything is only camouflage

but you don't have to worry because we're united Y ou can lean on me even when the load is heavy A handshake forme before the countdown starts

Where are we from? 1 Recognize your power. Black, your fury,

think well about where you are and where you want to start from 2 Never lower your head. It's your planet. Do what you have to do from A to Z.

3 Recognize where you're coming from and give a lot of support To the crews who for you don't fear the dead.

At the end ofyour power, you need your allies To eradicate the bad and go before the wind. That's what you have to do!

Cry, cry, I've already cried Now, nobodywill make fun of me

Y ou pretend not to know me But I recognized you from Delmas34

Where we drank coconut milk Where you ate a mango

Now you don't know where you are I saw you crying. What has happened to you?

I don't recognize your accent Everywhere you go you do crazy stuff I You have made yourself euernies

Now you speak French I You studied good, forgot your cn~ole You want to make your family believe that everything is fine

And that you're able to make lots of money Your mouth lies I You're a liar

In Haiti, you ate well Now you live in a room with cockroaches

Jescome35 who just arrived I You don't have money to go to the market Every day you eat flour with milk

Move on, move on I Do you think I'm just kidding? Move on, move on I Get up and come to see what's happening

Move on, move on I Do you think I'm just kidding? Haitian!

I look for ajob, I The white guy says I stole his money I look for a house, You say I'm dirty I That's why I go home

At school, the teacher said I am stupid I My whole family is broken

Refrain: Life's not easy I That's why we unite

32 Excerpt from "La Vi Ti Neg" (French and Haitian Creole), from the Album "mentalite moune mome", 1999 (my translation).

33 The year 1804 is the year ofHaitian independence. 34 A rich residential area ofPort-au-Prince, Haiti. 35 Haitian expression for someone, who only recently arrived in Canada.

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Like 'Trevolutionne," this song addresses the issues of family life and black pride, pinpointing the transnational dimension of Haitian etlmicity in Mont­real. But in contrast to many other of Muzion' s songs, "La Vi Ti Neg" raises the issue of ethnic consciousness and pride specifically with respect to Haitian community life in Montreal. In bringing up class-related issues, i.e. language, food, and Iifestyle, Muzion call for the recognition of Haitian origins and for class-transcending solidarity within the Haitian community. The common atti­tude among many migrants, that they should fulfill the ideal of the successful immigrant and thus deny migration-related losses and failures in order to meet the expectations of others, is rejected. Instead, Muzion depict the typical im­migrant who struggles to make ends meet while being tom between the immi­grant community in Canada, Haiti and the family-members left behind there and the host society as such. In this song, they deal especially with the am­bivalent feelings towards Haiti, which most Haitians are forced to leave for economic and political reasons, but which still plays an important part in many oftheir lives.

Most of the seven interviewed children shared this ambivalent feeling to­wards their parent's home country. This is also due to the fact that their par­ents themselves (re-)produce Contradietory and inconsistent images of Haiti. On the one hand, Haiti is depicted as a dramatically poor and violent country where people are regularly massacred and tortured. On the other hand, Haiti is depicted as the first black independent nation in the Western Hemisphere that has the potential to serve as a model for all black nations in the world. lt seems the first generation of Haitian immigrants has passed this somewhat paradoxical depiction of Haiti on to their children. Among the latter an even greater variety of depictions and meanings of Blackness and Haitianness ex­ists since they feel more attached to their host country than their parents and are thus more influenced by ideas developed within the black Canadian com­munity than they are. In the discussion about the meaning of the song "La Vi Ti Neg" Vanessa explained:

Forme, with Haiti, it gets on my nerves too what they say all the time about crimi­nality and all that. But in the songs, what is important is that we are here today, we have to leam that Haiti worked in the past. And today, we can also work, we have to unite, that's what will give us power. Our parents, they are always stressed, they al­ways work and all that. But we, young people, we can do things in a different way. They, Muzion, they do it. Everybody knows them, they are proud tobe Haitians and they make a lot of money.

Conclusion

By means of the songs - using them as a primary source of information and as a means for discussing their messages with children - I could identify the ma­jor issues that affect immigrant Haitian children in Montreal in their endeav­our to localize themselves socially and culturally in an environment character-

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ized by ambivalent ties and demands. The songs and the children's reflections upon them give insight into their perceptions of their own social reality be­tween home and host society.

Through listening to music and experiencing music as a way of life, immi­grant children are better able to find their own social selves in the world they live in. They may constmct selective belongings in order to position them­selves socially vis-a-vis their host society, their immigrant community and their parent's country of origin. They use hip-hop as a reflective tool for deal­ing with the relevant issues affecting their lives, such as family life or black power.

With regard to their farnily lives the image of Haiti that children develop is a rather stereotypical and negative one. lt serves as a symbolic icon encom­passing the parents' generation's conflicts in establishing themselves in Can­ada, conflicts also effected by their desire to maintain Haitian traditions and values and to retum to Haiti one day. Children consider their parents' ideolo­gies and traditions as out -dated and as incompatible with life in Montreal. Their parents' desire to retum to Haiti evokes fears in them ofbeing deported one day to a "home" country they have never been to.

We also leam about divisions along gender lines when focusing on prob­lems within the family. The images of mothers and fathers depicted in the songs differed considerably and highlighted major conflicts. In the discussions girls and boys related differences of attitudes and behaviour in terms of gender - i.e. different relationships to their mothers and fathers - thus portraying so­cial and cultural diversity as linked to gender as well.

With regard to "black power" Haiti serves as an imaginary homeland. Contrary to its depiction when related to farnily issues, it appears as an image one can draw upon for the production of black pride. By means of the songs, Haitian children are encouraged to leam about the Haitian revolution and the heroic deeds oftheir ancestors, who fought for Haiti's independence and made it the first black nation in the world. The conflicts they experience within their farnilies as well as vis-a-vis the Canadian host society trigger the "invention" of Haiti as an imaginary land characterized by black unity and black power.

By relating to Haitian history through music, children may develop a feel­ing of belanging to the Haitian community. At the same time they remain part of their Canadian environment. The accounts of the children revealed that a transnational Haitian identity exists side-by -side with a genuine feeling of be­longing to the Canadian society. These attachments do not go without conflict but nevertheless bear positive connotations in their inter-relatedness.

Haitian children are aware that their lives are shaped by "culture," "cul­ture" being in their view something that needs to be situated somewhere be­tween their parents' "heritage" and their own cultural creations, ascriptions and belongings.

The class-transcending qualities of hip-hop may serve as a sociallink be­tween youth from a well-to-do middle-class and children from a poor working dass background. Particularly for children, who spend a lot of their time on

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the streets, hip-hop can serve to reconstruct black history and culture, and to fulfill to some degree their desire to belong somewhere. Sometimes it is only through hip-hop that Haitian children and youth get to know about the history of slavery and about Haitian history in general. Especially the heroic aspects of the Haitian revolution can help to create a positive identification as blacks and as descendants of rebels and revolutionaries. 36 Through the ideals and ideologies attached to hip-hop, social values such as respect, tmst, and credi­bility may be conveyed to children - values many children do not acquire through their parents.

The analysis of children's perception and interpretation of their music helps to elucidate the social dynamics within their peer-groups as well as be­tween themselves and their parents and the larger society. I agree with those who claim that societies need to be understood from different angles and that the insights children can provide make our understanding of the social dynam­ics within societies more complete. 37 Like "gender," "generation" can serve as an analytical tool that opens up new perspectives on social phenomena and can therefore contribute to the development of new theories in the social sci­ences and anthropology in particular.

Appendix

Rien a perdre Pas unjour sans ligne

Combien m'disent: 'T'aurais fait une bonne avocate yo qu'est-ce t'as bloque?' Mais j'ai l'äme artistique, un esprit trop mystique presque autistique aux lyriques

desinvoltes et j'ai choisi le rap pour vivrede ma rivolte Apposer ma poesie, la faire couler sur un beat frappa

Le hip hop fait pour moi c'que tout le reste ne fera pas Me laisse 3 fois 16 bars de fracas qui frappe a la tete de celui

qui autrement ne m'ecouteras pas Garder les jeunes hors de la rue stocke sur ma musique

Faire entendre ma voix tres haute la, sur la place publique Representer la masse opprimee, tu dis qu'ce bullshit 7

Mais combien levent leurs bras quand j 'prends le micro pour rirner?

L'education Un pere alcoolique, un fils colerique au regard diabolique

Solopas d'acolyte s'enerve et frappe trop vite Une mere qui vend son corps, une fille qui etend son corps facilemen

Dans l'lit d'un porc la premiere nuit qu'illa sort dehors

36 On hip-hop's relevance in creating ethnic consciousness and historical reflection, seealso Weller 2003. In German cities, a growing number ofyouth projects use hip-hop as an educative tool in order to attract young people from the streets and use the langnage and style ofhip-hop to gain the youth's attention.

37 Caputo 1995; Hardmann 1973: 76; Haudrup Christensen 1994.

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Un pere abusif qui derespecte sa fenune, le fils derespecte sa mere Autorite ephemere et ses potes l'acclament

Une famille, la premiere source de toutes nos actions La plus belle chose ou la plus l'aide dependant d'l'amour dans l'education.

Tel pere, tel vice Une vie naive de 10 ans

Mere depressive, un pere absent style dictateur au regard traneharrt 'Qu'est ce que t'as fils? Dis que t ' as peur! ' Il dicte la peur dans tout le foyer

Et devient d'autant plus bestial quand vient le temps de payer les bills, le loyer Quelles conneries! Des qu'on entend la sonnerie, plus personne ne rit.

La mere place le couvert et l'enfant court dans son lit. Couche sous ses draps, il constipe a l'idee que ce con de type

Viendra jouer avec lui, la main dans son slip ... Refrain: Afterall you've dorre wrong, you want me to forgive you 7

You say you love me? How dare you forget the past! I don't believe you when you say you're sorry.

J'Revolutionne Tu verras un million d'esclaves qui rament C'est nous! Un million d'enfants, d'hommes et de femmes: Nous!

Sans chaine, sans coup de fouet. C'qui nous fait bouger: la rage dans nos ämes c'est nous

L 'humanite croise 1' ebene et l'ivoire c' est nous! Une seule armee d'oppresses qui crient «War!»

Y' en a marre d' etre la masse derisoire! Blaues ou noirs, On reprend le pouvoir sur nous!

Mais qui m' a zombifiee, confisquee, mon esprit. .. Docile? Sauf si ce reve ecrit vit, J'reste prise sans espoir ici ...

Je n' ai plus de larme du tout quand j 'braille. On fout le scandale!

J'revolutionne, Boukman style Ou que je m' en aille, Chez nous je m'installe.

Mets le volume, cogne le chant des tam-tams dans les momes. On courre en acclamant ces hommes

Morts! (pour nous servir de couverture) Libres! (tous saints comme Louverture)

Nous mourrons tous egaux c'fois-ci Entre les ghettos et l'aristocratie.

Tant qu' il n'y aura d'un drapeau et trop de patries, Nous ne serons que des negros contre des bourreaux nazis.

Tant qu'on sera juge pour notre sexe, notre race, notre classe, Po ur le dieu qu' Oll prie et venere

Tant que mes textes vexent et fächent le lache Qui n'a pas compris ce qu'on dit et que des freres

Partout, de tous les pays, s'ecroulent Meurent SOUS le mepris, les coups.

Kote Moun Y o? Men Moun Y o! On veut la guerre - Et puis c' est tout!! !

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HEIKE DROTBOHM

172

La Vi Ti N eg - Life of a small nigger C 'est one love I comme la perle des Antilles mon clan brille

En tant que les gens qui ont aueanti I le pouvoir d'autruit en 1804 Black & proud to be, j 'vise les gens aptes

A reconnaitre qu'aujourd'hui c'est camoufle mais faut pas s'soucier car nous sommes associes

yo tu peux t'accoter sur moi si lacharge est lourde Un coup de main aux miens avant le campte a rebours

On part de ou? 1 reconnait ta force. Black, ta rage,

pense bien a ou est-ce que tu l'amorces 2 baisse jamais la tete. C'est ta planete. Fais ce que t'as a faire avec de A a Z

3 reconnait d'ou tu sors, donne beaucoup d'support aux crews qui pour toi s' en foutent de la mort.

A bout de tes forces, t'as besoin de tes allies Effacer le malet aller devant l'vent. Ce sa li ye!

Kriye kriye ou, mwen kriye deja Kounye-a pa gen moun kap manke mwen d' ega

Pran poz ou pa konnen'm Mwen te konn we ou bo ZOll Delma

Kote ou te ap bwe bon dlo kokoye Ou te ap man je mango

Kounye-en ou pa konn kote ou ye Mwen we je ou nen dlo I Sa ki pran ou?

Mwen pa sa rekonet aksen ou W ap mache di betiz, I ap fe lenmi ak prop san ou

Tonbe pale franse I gro klas lekol bliye kreyol Montre fanmi lakay wap bien Mennen I se kob la kap monte

Bouch ou senti I Ou ap bay manti Ayiti, ou te konn manje

Kounye-en ou rete nen yon ti pies kay plen ravet Jescome ki fek paret I Pagen kob fe maket

Chakjou manje farin ak let

Avanse, avanse! Ou konprann m'ap ranse? A vanse, avanse! Kanpe vini we sa kap pase Avanse, avanse! Nou konprann m'ap ranse?

Aiysyen! M'al eheehe travay, I blan en di se kob li m'ap vole M'al eheehe kay, yo di mwen malprop

Se pou mwen tounen lakay Lekol, met la di mwen se kretin I Tout fanmi'm gaye

Refrain: Lavi na pa fasil I Se pou sa nou rasanble.

SMALL HEROES. RAP MUSIC AND SELECTIVE BELONGINGS

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Auzanneau, Michelle 2001: Identites africaines: le rap comme lieu d'expression. Cahiers d'Etudes africaines, Vol. XLI, No. 3: 711-734.

Basch, Linda, Nina Glick Schiller & Cristina Szanton Blanc 1994: Nations Un­bound. Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States. Amsterdam: OPA (Overseas Publishers Association).

Caputo, Virginia 1995: Anthropology's silent 'others:' A consideration of some conceptual and methodological issues for the study of youth and children's cul­tures. In: Amit-Talai, Vered & Helena Wulff (eds.): Youth Cultures: A Cross­

cultural Perspective. London & New York: Routledge: 19-42. Dejean, Paull990: D 'Haiti au Quebec. Montreal: Cidihca. Drotbohm, Heike 2000: Timoun-yo ce canet banc malere. Die Situation, Probleme

und Potenziale von Jugendlichen im ländlichen Haiti, dargestellt an zwei Ge­meinden des Departements du Nord. Unpublished study, carried out for the German Society of Technical Cooperation, GTZ. Eschbom 2000.

Drotbohm, Heike 2005: Geister in der Diaspora. Haitianisehe Diskurse über Ge­schlechter, Jugend und Macht in Montreal, Kanada. Marburg: Curupira.

Foner, Nancy (ed.) 2001: Islands in the City. West Indian Migration to New York. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University ofCalifomia Press.

Gilroy, Paul 1991: 'There Ain 't No Black in the Union Jack.' The Cultural Politics ofRace and Nation. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Glick Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch & Cristina Szanton Blanc (eds.) 1992: Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration. Race, Class, Ethnicity, and National­ism Reconsidered. Armals ofthe new york academy of sciences, Vol. 645. New York: The New York Academy of Sciences.

Hardman, Charlotte 1993: Auf dem Schulhof. Unterwegs zu einer Anthropologie der Kindheit. In: Loo, Marie-Jose van de & Margarete Reinhart (eds.): Kinder. Eth­nologische Forschungen in fünf Kontinenten. München: Trickster: 60-77.

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James, Allison 1995: Talking of children and youth: language, socialization and cul­ture. In: Amit-Talai, Vered & Helena Wulff (eds.): Youth Cultures: A Cross­cultural Perspective. London & New York: Routledge: 43-62.

Kage, Jan 2002: American Rap. Explicit Lyrics- US-HipHop und Identität. Mainz: Ventil.

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Soziale Praxis, moralische Diskurse und inszenierte Körperlichkeit. Münster, Harnburg & London: Lit-Verlag: 123-153.

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Luig, Ute & Jochen Seebode (eds.) 2003: Ethnologie der Jugend. Soziale Praxis, moralische Diskurse und inszenierte Körperlichkeit. Münster, Harnburg & Lon­don: Lit-Verlag.

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LIMINALITY AS LINGUISTIC PROCESS.

IMMIGRANT YOUTH AND EXPERIENCES OF LANGVAGE

IN GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES

H. Julia Eksner and Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

lntroduction

If it is an adult they think that younger people don't really know how to translate. They just look down on them and by showing them that a kid translates it kind of raises up my spirits a bit. It kind of gets back at them. [ ... ]He willlookdown on him and he will be like, ha, ha, ha, and he will start langhing at the little kid. And if the little kid does show him he can translate it kind of raises up the kid's spirits. It gives [him] more encouragement for the next time (Sammy).

12-year old Sammy, the son of immigrants from Mexico to Chicago, is one of millions of children of immigrants in the United States and Europe who, in the process of growing up, use language to negotiate multiple relations and forge new identities. These youths sometimes utilize their knowledge of two lan­guages to mediate between their parents and speakers of the "majority" lan­guage. At the same time, like all people, they deploy language to negotiate their own identities with these adults, and with each other, as well as to contest identities that are wrested upon them. Each of these linguistic processes - me­diation and Contestation - is shaped by the youths' positions of liminality along the lines of immigration status, language, and age.

In this paper1 we will build from anthropological theories of liminality, providing a critical evaluation of this concept as a useful heuristic for under­standing the linguistic practices of immigrant children. Entailed in this is a brief discussion of how the concept of liminality has hitherto been used to ex­plain the experiences of immigrants, particularly immigrant youth, in anthro­pological and socio-linguistic research. Centrally, this paperwill explore the power-laden ways in which the limen becomes situated linguistically, and how new identities are constructed from this locus, by looking at the language practices of Turkish adolescents in Berlin (Germany) and Mexican-origin children in Chicago (United States).

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Nina Glick-Schiller, Daniel Monterescu, and Jen­nifer Reynolds for thoughtful feedback, to Remzye Uykun for her translations from Turkish into German, and to Olivia Pils for the photograph of the Turkish youths' graffiti art in the Berlin field site.

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U sing these two cases as points of leverage, we develop a comparative analysis of immigrant youths' experiences in two different national and cul­tural contexts, focusing on lingnistic processes of mediation and contestation. We center our analysis of mediation in the study of Mexican-origin children who seiVe as langnage and culture brokers for their families in the Midwestern United States. Our analysis of Contestation is based on the ways in which the Turkish youths dustered in a Berlin youth gang use langnage to contest and recode stereotypes put on them by dominant society. We draw from multiple, mutually illuminating sources of data, including field notes based on partici­pant obseiVation, open and semi-stmctured inteiViews, inferred personality characteristics tests, suiVey data, transcripts of focus groups, children's jour­nal entries and transcripts of youth engaged in a range of talk.

Webegin our discussion with abrief elaboration of the constmct of limi­nality, from its inception to its portrayal in current anthropological, sociologi­cal and sociolingnistic inquiry. We then go on to identify three key theoretical concerns about the construct of liminality: first, issues of power; second, the conceptualization of change; and third, the multiplicity of identity processes. We consider how these three issues play out in the experiences of immigrant youths and their langnage practices, and through grounded theorizing aim to contribute to an elaboration of theories of liminality, partly by joining Tur­ner's concept ofliminality with more recently-forged hybridity theories.

The concept of liminality

The concept of liminality was originally formulated by Turner (1969), who took up van Gennep's (1960 [1909]) model of "rites of passage." Elaborating on Durkheim's (1912), and later Eliade's (1959) dichotomization of human experience in sacred and profane, Turner used this concept to describe a phase through which an individual passes during processes of social transition. Li­minality is a condition in which individuals are stripped off their ordinary identities, roles, and positions. During a liminal period the characteristics of the "ritual subject," as Turner calls it, are "ambignous;" he or she is "betwixt and between" (Turner 1969: 94).

Rites of passage are periods of ambiguity that accompany every change of place, state, social position and age of an individual. A rite of passage is a three-part process that includes first the separation of the individual from one of his previous social statuses, second, the limen (lat.) or threshold phase, and third, the aggregation of the individual into a new status. During the first pha­se, the individual symbolically detaches from an earlier status in the social stmcture andlor a set of cultural conditions. "Liminality," the second stage, is a state experienced by the individual during a rite of passage. lt is a condition

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of not having full membership in a status. 2 In the third phase the ritual cycle is completed and the ritual subject is again a member of a "relatively" stable sta­te, with the binding norms and values connected to it.

Turner had a closely defined understanding of liminality. In his conceptu­alization "liminal personae" do not fit the categories that are available for so­cietal classification. lt is exactly for their "betwixt and between" -ness (Turner 1969: 94), their lack of membership in established categories, that liminal per­sons are assigned and represented by numerous symbols in societies that ritu­alize these transitions. On the symbolic plane liminal transitions are often rep­resented as death, darkness, invisibility, and being in the womb (95). The be­havior expected of liminal persons is passivity, humility and obedience. Clas­sic examples are initiates in traditional societies and soldiers in modern day armies. They are in a state of absence of personal rights, and they cannot chal­lenge unjust treatrnent. Their former self is ritually deconstmcted and a new self that willlead them through the new life stage is constmcted from its mins. During the transition stage, liminal personae develop "an intense comradeship and egalitarianism" (95) and rank and status distinctions disappear. For Turner the experience of liminality is part of the normal developmental process of every individual: "sociallife is a type of dialectical process that involves suc­cessive experience of high and low, communitas and stmcture, homogeneity and differentiation, equality and inequality" (97). Importantly, each society is made up of "multiple personae, groups, and categories," each of these with a separate developmental cycle, so that at any given moment an individual might be both in liminal and stmctured states.

When a group of people goes through a liminal phase together, communi­tas is created. A brief elaboration of the notion of communitas is of interest here, because in this article we are specifically addressing social processes and practices. Communitas is not "community" in its prevalent connotation, but essentially the complementary opposite of societal norms and classifications: "[C]ommunitas emerges where social stmcture is not" (126). The opposition between stmcture and communitas hence does not describe the difference be­tween the inner sphere of family or neighborhood life ("community") and the outer sphere of official institutions and the public sphere. Communitas means that there are no institutionalized mles or norms. Communitas is outside of the defined statuses of "structure," it is "spontaneous, immediate, concrete" as opposed to "norm-governed, institutionalized, abstract" (127). Cmcially, as we can see, communitas can only become evident "through its juxtaposition to, or hybridization with, aspects of social stmcture" (127).

Turner is then situated in a structuralist functionalist approach in which the liminal phase culminates in the reestablishment of structure and social order. However, this process is dialectic, and for Turner the notion of hybridity is en­tailed in this dialectic. The opposite is part ofthat which it opposes. Commu-

2 Turnerdefines a state as "any type of stable or recurrent condition that is cultur­ally recognized." It opposes the "transitions" between these states.

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nitas (and hybridity) forTurnerare not simply resistant forces, but communi­tas is what makes structure possible.

Theoretical work related to the notion of liminality includes Mary Doug­las' (1966) work on purity and dirt and the danger inherent in their conflation and Max Gluckman's (1997)work on rituals of rebellion and the inversion of power stmctures during seasonal rituals. These early anthropological writings, according to Werbner (1997), showed how hybrid symbolic acts challenge cultural orders from a position within society. Other work in this line include Barth's (1969) analysis of the creation of identity via processes of opposition and boundary construction; Bakhtin's (1968 [1940]) analysis of popular mass culture and carnival as subversive and challenging inversions of popular dis­course; and Park's (1950) concept ofthe marginal man. Each ofthese theories can provide insights into the experiences of people who do not experience themselves as full members of particular social groups, even as each differs in their central focus in the way they address the experiences of individuals ver­sus social groups; the movement of people between spheres versus their ex­periences on the margins, and power and change.

In the context of immigrant and minority cultural and langnage practices, the notion of liminality was first framed in essentialist models of identity that were instrumental in creating discourses about the "deficiency" of immigrant children. The notion of cultural and cognitive deficiency proposed that minor­ity and immigrant children come into mainstream society with a lack of skills in one or more domains (linguistic, cognitive, developmental, social).3 This deficit model, which previously dominated work across disciplines on the lin­guistic and cultural practices of minority and immigrant children, has since meta devastating critique from the fields of education, psychology and cul­tural studies. In a postmodernist reaction to the dominating Eurocentric view on minority children's cultural and linguistic practices (andin its implications of their cognitive potential), the notion of new ethnicities and with it the con­cept of hybridity was introduced.4 The term hybridity describes the idea that immigrants and ethnic minorities are not merely caught in a deadlock between cultures; rather this state of "in-betweenness" is a positive, socially productive historical process in which new cultural practices are forged in their own right. Werbner (1997) stresses the unbounded, impure characteristics of hy­bridity as opposed to essentializing notions of monolithic identities implied in normative theories surrounding immigration and immigrant identities. Hybrid­ity theory emphasizes the creativity of the cultural practices of the "new eth­nicities." The central idea involves looking at what these formerly stigmatized social groups have to offer in and of themselves, and not at how they compare to the dominant group.

In post-colonial theory it is Bhabha (1994) who has reconceptualized the notion of cultural hybridity. Bhabha introduces the concept of mimicry to

3 Fora critique see Cazden 1970, 2001. 4 Hal11996 [1989], 1994; Hall & du Gay 1996.

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conceptualize the subjectivity of the liminal experience, the "social articula­tion of difference, from the minority perspective" (2). He argnes that cultural identities are not pre-formulated, a-historical cultural traits that are mapped onto conceptions of distinct ethnicities. Rather, for Bhabha cultural identities are continually negotiated through the interface and exchange of cultural per­formances that produce recognizable representations of cultural difference. For Bhabha a third space is created at the heart of first world cultures and Third World postcolonial states. This is a liminal, hybrid space for the produc­tion of cultural meaning. The concept of mimicry subverts Fanon's (1952) di­chotomic theory of oppressor and oppressed, while still speaking to a hege­monic context that demands assimilation, in which there is no room for differ­ence. Liminality - as subversion- here takes the form of (subtle) mimicry, "as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite. This is to say that the discourse of mimicry is constmcted around an ambivalence; in or­der to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference" (Bhabha 1994: 85).

Mimicry is neither unidirectional, nor static. Rather, it presents a practice of political agency appropriating forms of cultural representation. In sociolin­gnistic theory, Rampton (1999) shares this focus on slippage and describes so­cial and linguistic interactions as constant flows of stmctured practices that can be breached and intermpted, and because of this, day to day life presents dozens and dozens "of small-scale opportunities for minor adventures into li­minality - opportunities, indeed, for the reworking of oppressive relations which liminality is seen to permit" (Rampton 1997: 6). In his study on the use of Stylized Asian English among multiethnic urban youth in Great Britain, Rampton (1995: 158f.), draws on theories of liminality to interpret the use of stylized langnage as a form of ritual interaction. According to Rampton, styl­ized talk as a youth cultural langnage practice centers on issues of social or­der. He introduces three different kinds of interaction rituals that use stylized langnage - rituals of disorder, differentiation and consensus. These three func­tions - the anti-stmctural, the differentiating and the consensual - are taken from a number of discussions of ritual. 5 Rampton (1995) points out that col­lective ritual, here in the form of langnage practices, function as attempts to resolve deep social anomalies and contradictions. These processes surround­ing stmcture and anti-stmcture - as theorized by Turner- become meaningful in the context ofyouths' use offormalized speech as well.

Recent work employing the concept of liminality then uses Turner' s con­cept as well as hybridity theory to theoretically grasp processes of adoles­cence, ethnicity and identity. This work includes considerations of adoles­cence as "liminal,"6 "liminal ethnicities,"7 and studies on liminal cultural,8 and

5 See Gaffman 1967. 6 Amit-Ta1ai & Wu1ff 1995; Bucho1tz 2002; Ske1ton 1998. 7 Back 1996; Hewitt 1992. 8 Gi1roy 1987; Puzar & Markovic 2001.

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multilingual language practices9 These recent conceptualizations are impor­tant developments in our understanding of immigrant positionalities, because they address the tensions of immigrant subjectivities and practices without rei­fying and fixating immigrants in stable identity categories, or normative host­newcomer dualisms. However, both the original and these recent conceptuali­zations fail to consider how, at the locallevel, liminal practices may play out in very different, possibly Contradietory ways, and how they might include practices ofboth accommodation and defiance at the same time. Liminal prac­tices may then be both hybrid practices that merge different cultural forms into a "bricolage" (Hebdige 1979: 102ff.), and practices of Contestation that newly forge apparently "authentic" ethnic traditions (Williams 1990). In this paper we willlook at language practices that appear to be dichotomaus in this way; we, however, consider both to be linguistic practices that arise from be­ing "betwixt and between."

Practices of mediation and Contestation

Examining liminality as linguistic practices means looking at how liminal po­sitionings in society are responded to culturally. W e have described prior so­ciolinguistic research on positionalities of in-betweenness and marginality. As we turn to our cases, we want briefly to introduce the social and historical contexts in which these particular youths grow up, and note some similarities and differences. Similarities in the social and historical contexts of Berlin and Chicago include challenges for immigrant communities to establish access to institutional networks and resources ofthe dominant society, and ethnicization and racialization of both immigrant populations in the dominant discourse. 10

In the United States and Germany immigrants can be found at alllevels of so­ciety; nevertheless the Latino and Turkish immigrant families in our case studies are positioned in the lower socioeconomic levels in society, as indeed are the majority of their Counterparts. Resulting from this is low symbolic, cultural and educational capital of immigrants, and low linguistic prestige ac­corded to their language. 11

Important differences between these immigration contexts include the fact that the sites vary in the relative progression of historical stages of immigra­tion in that the Turkish youths generally were second and third generation immigrants, while the Latino children were the 1.5 generation, 12 i.e. some of them had been bom in the United States, while some of them had only re­cently arrived with their parents. The complexities of the local sites also in­clude the fact that the Chicago data is drawn from etlmographic fieldwork conducted in two different communities in the Chicago area.

9 Androutsopoulos2002; Eksner, to appear; Rampton 1995,1999. 10 <;:ag1ar 1995; Urciuoli 1998. 11 Bourdieu 1977. 12 Portes & Rumbaut 2001.

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Differences in the research foci in each site also have importance for the kinds of phenomena we observed: the Mexican children were observed mainly at home and in school, while the Turkish youths were observed in a youth centre and on the neighborhood streets. Accordingly, the youth were involved in different kinds of activity settings, where different langnage practices would flourish: in activities with families or in classrooms (in the case of the Mexican youth) versus hanging out in the street (in the case of the Turkish immigrant study). This has implications for the presence or absence of adults in the activity settings described as well as for other differences in practice. For example, while hauging out in the street different participants are involved in the activity, different situational identities are constmcted, and different ac­tions are pursued than when translating back and forth for a mentor while ne­gotiating over a public aid form with a govermnent agent.

Lastly, in addition to differences in social and historical contexts, it is im­portant to consider differences between the groups that we studied. The Turk­ish youth were somewhat older (ages 16-18) andin mid to late adolescence, while the Mexican youths were 10- to 12-years old, just entering the liminal phase of adolescence. Further, the Turkish youths in Berlin were self­proscribed members of a local youth gang (the "36"). In contrast, the Mexican youths were identified on the basis of a school survey in which they self­identified as translators for their farnilies.

lt is this range of activities and variations in immigration histories and contexts that gives empirical power to our grounded discussion of the concept of liminality. By comparing two immigration contexts, and contemplating the liminal experiences and practices connected to them, we are able to illuminate the dimensions of liminality in ways that would be impossible with a single case. All of these remarks also add up to explain why we use the Berlin case to describe processes of contestation, because on an overall continuum these adolescent Turkish youths' practices are situated more at the end of contesting practices. In contrast, the practices we observed with the Latino children are overall more closely linked to mediating activities. This does not mean that each group does not engage in the other activity, or that each practice cannot be used in the service of the other (as indeed the opening quote by Sannny suggests; Sammy uses his skills as a mediator to contest his positioning by others). Further, we do not mean to imply that these differences in the expres­sions of liminality are culturally pre-determined orthat they map deterministi­cally or easily onto either cultural group or context (Germany or USA; Mexi­can or Turkish). Rather, it is the unique combination of developmental stage (which includes identity formation and autonomy from the farnily) as well as socio-cultural and dass context that shapes the forms of cultural practices around langnage that are produced.

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Research sites

Our first research site is located in a Turkish ethnic enclave in Berlin, Ger­many, a neighborhood also known as "Little lstanbul." During the late 1990s, socio-linguists, politicians, and the media in Germany have busily discussed a new langnage code as being the second and third generation immigrant youths' Creole variety of German. Discourse depicted and continues to depict the majority of the speakers to be of Turkish origin and the new code is char­acterized by the "toughness" and "aggressiveness" of the streets. Some writers declared this apparent new code to be a phenomenon related to pidginization; some labeled it mere semi-lingualism. Both the media and official institutions described the speech of German Turks as bad, uneducated and unintelligible. At the same time pop-cultural discourse celebrated a new stereotype of a tough, empowered, yet semi-literate, inarticulate jargon - "'lan-talk"13 or "Kanak Sprak" 14 (Zaimoglu 1995, 1997, 1999)- supposedly spoken by immi­grant Turks of the second and third generation. The data presented here is pul­led from a larger body of research on how German Turkish youths' linguistic and social practices are related to their notions of collective identity that are created in engagement with and Contestation of discourses about their liminal positioning in German society (Eksner, to appear).

The youths in the study were predominantly male teenagers aged 14-18 years and involved in a neighborhood youth gang. In contrast to other neigh­borhoods in Berlin, where Turkish youths grow up with closer contact to peers of other nationalities, and often are completely bilingual, most of the youths in the Berlin-Kreuzberg field site were dominant in the langnage used at home, Turkish, and usually also interacted in Turkish among themselves (Eksner, to appear). Most of the children are successive bilingual speakers, with Turkish learned first and German acquired later. However, the youths have several co­des and registers at their availability, and the "new pidgin" is only one situ­ational code reserved mainly for conflict interactions with members of the out-group, particularly German and Arab youths. As in other cultural settings, the youths' code and register use is connected to specific linguistic realms: they used several linguistic strategies, i.e. different registers and codes, ac­cording to the demands of the respective situation. There were three different spheres of relations that demanded different linguistic strategies: First, the in­ner sphere of class-equal familiar and familial relations, secondly, the outer sphere of authority and class/race imbalance, and thirdly an outer sphere of reversed authority and dominance by the Turkish youth. We will discuss in more detail how the code used in this outer sphere of reversed authority has

13 "'Lan" from "oglan" means "boy" in formal Turkish, it is often being used to mean "gay" in slang language. Both "'lan" and "oglan" (my son) are slang terms that Turkish male youth in Berlin frequently use to address each other. "To speak 'lan" is how this code is frequently called among German youth.

14 A derogative term used for immigrants, from the Melanesian ethnonym "Ka­nak."

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performative power attached to it that transforms language into a tool of con­testation.

In the second case study we are building on a line of research carried out by sociolinguistic, psychological and educational researchers interested in the experiences of immigrant children in the United States who translate for their farnilies. Since the 1990s there has been an increased interest in what re­searchers have called "family interpreters," 15 language and culture "brokers"16

or "para-phrasers."17 Researchers have considered the social and linguistic processes involved as well as the psychological and educational consequences of this practice.

Illustration 1: Claiming territory and power, wall with graffiti by the "36 Juniors"

Para-phrasing, like other forms of social interaction, takes many different shapes as it occurs in different contexts, relationships, and activity settings. Most often, youth translate for their parents (usually their mothers) or other close farnily relations; but they may negotiate for that parent in interactions with a wide range of others, including teachers, social workers, lawyers, gov­ermnent officials, store personnel, doctors, dentists, and strangers on the street. The texts children translate include officialletters, medical and insur-

15 Valdes 2002; Valdes, Chavez & Angelilli 1999. 16 Buriel, Perez, DeMent, Chavez & Moran 1998; Cooper, Denner & L6pez 1999;

Tse 1995; 1996; Weisskireh & Alva 2002. 17 Orellana 2001; Orellana, Dom er & Pulido 2003; Orellana, Reynolds, Dom er &

Meza2003.

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ance documents, letters from school, application forms for store credit and le­gal materials. These exchanges may take place in public spaces, before audi­ences, or in the privacy of families' homes. Children may deploy mostly Eng­lish as a mediational tool (e.g. when translating written or oral texts, or when going out in the world to do things for their parents simply because they can speak English), or both English and their home langnage (e.g. when they ne­gotiate conversation), in different configurations. Power relations in these situations are differently configured, which shapes the nature of the media­tional demands on youth, as they must negotiate their own relationship with each speaker as well as the communication between different adults. There are different kinds of mediational demands on children when they translate, for example, between a parent and a lawyer, a teacher and a student, or an aunt and a neighbor. But in all cases children have to listen as well as speak in or­der to represent each perspective and accomplish the task at hand.

As this initial introduction of our two research sites demonstrates, stmc­turally comparable experiences of immigrant childhoods in the US and Ger­many can lead to different practices situated in subjective feelings of margin­ality.

Theoretical concerns

While the concept of liminality seems immediately heuristically useful in cha­racterizing these experiences, as we detail our cases we will use grounded theorizing to further elaborate the topic. With this discussion we want to indi­cate ways to conceptualize liminality in a more differentiated way than has hitherto been the case, and better unite it with other theories of hybridity. We will consider three major theoretical concems, which fall into the following broadened categories: (1) issues ofpower, (2) the conceptualization of change, and (3) the multiplicity of identity processes.

Power

While for Turner the liminal phase is a phase of loss of status, powerlessness, and obedience, "new" liminality theories, speaking to hybridity and defiance, operate with complementary categories: appropriation, power (of the streets), and disobedience. There is a mismatch then between these two conceptual frames. As our, and other, case studies reveal, adolescent social practices clearly show the impact of power relations, or stmcture and in-betweenness often comes hand in hand with powerlessness. Immigrant child translators in Chicago are mediators between their parents and English speakers because of socioeconomic and stmctural conditions that have kept their parents largely monolinguaL Turkish teenagers in Berlin are stereotyped and experience pre­judice that is similarly connected to their socioeconomic standing and segre­gated lives in Germany. They create a situational code that appropriates and at

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the same time defies these stereotypes. This, however, neither implies that they are unconscious of power relations ( or that they don't adhere to the de­mands of power inequality), nor that their cultural responses are truly agentic political responses to these relations.

Stylized Turkish German as contestation We introduced three different spheres that demanded different linguistic

strategies of Turkish youths in an ethnic enclave in Berlin: the inner sphere of class-equal familiar and farnilial relations, the outer sphere of authority and class/race imbalance, and lastly an outer sphere of reversed authority and do­minance by the Turkish youth. Particularly during situations of conflict with members of the out -group, the boys would intentionally use a third register, apart from Turkish and German, which I have called Stylized Turkish Ger­man18 (STG) and which is the object of ongoing debate about "pidginization" in Germany. STG, which is used in the outer sphere of reversed authority and dominance by the Turkish youth ( outer sphere 2), will be the focus of the fol­lowing discussion.

The langnage ideologies of the youths reflect the dominant discourse that strongly prefers standardGerman pronunciation and describes (ethnic) accents as negative. Accents are complex signs of difference in which several semiotic principles converge: they are perceived as outlining contrasting cultural posi­tions and create a frame of reference and interpretation in which a person's looks, langnage and actions are judged.19 To say that a person sounds typically Turkish means the person is likely to mean or do just what one would expect from a Turk. In contemporary Germany a Turkish accent is strongly associ­ated with exclusion. People who speak with such an accent can be ridiculed, treated as if they are stupid, and put down by standard speakers. Accent as a marker of ethnic identity also indexes social capital. The youths showed keen awareness of these different ways that accents cmcially influence their social positioning. 20 While accounts of accommodation to standard, or as they called it, "good" German were frequent among the youths, in the sphere of reversed power relations, accent was redefined as a sign of power and strength in the face of the interlocutor.

lt is the peculiarity of outer sphere 2 interactions that the mles and power inequalities of outer-sphere 1 are suspended or superseded by reversed norms?1 Here the Turkish youth feel themselves to be in a (real or imagined) position of dominance. The relations in outer sphere 2 are not connected to in­stitutions or authorities as those of outer-sphere 1 are. Instead they take place in uncontrolled territory that cannot be claimed by Germanmainstream soci­ety, as for instance the territory of the neighborhood Kreuzberg 36 or the youth center. Typical interactions take place on the street, in parks, in public

18 This term is mode1ed after Rampton's (1995) "Stylized Asian English." 19 Urciouli 1998. 20 Eksner, to appear. 21 Bakhtin 1968 [1940].

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places, with people who have no institutional or network control over them. These interactions include other youths, especially youths that are not part of the same networks, thus Germans and other foreign youth.

There are two main characteristics of conflict situations with non-peers. First, conflict situations are carried out in ritualized speech that reflects ex­actly their notions about others as they are mirrored and indexed in language. Second, they employ linguistic strategies of insult and counter-insult to com­pete over masculinity.22 Not only could code switching be observed, in their interviews most boys also stated that they spoke "hard" or "tough" in Situa­tions of conflict. The following is an excerpt from an interview with 18-year old Murat (M). 23

JE: 24 Are there any situations, in which you talk harder than you talk now with me?

M: Naturally there are, yes. For example, if I see a guy here, who, 1et's say, is getting on my nerves or something, or who wants to confront me, or some­thing like that, then I'll ta1k a litt1e bit harder... Whi1e now ... now I'm giving an interview, 1et's say, I'm still talking more friend1y. Now I'm still talking friend1y, you know ... Then, 1et' s say, another one comes, like this: [Murat's voice rises to higher pitch, and gets louder. Facial expression and body language more tense] Hey! ... What's up! Whyya staring atme ... [lowered voice and pitch again} naturally I'll ta1k hard with him, that's automatic. Not. .. yes ... uh ... uh ... fand back to original pattem} I won't ta1k 1ike that, because then he thinks softballs .... What's up.

STG then is a code created to represent "toughness" in language; a "foreig­nized" German with Turkish paralinguistic features. Its properties are closely modeled on the discourses surrounding indexes of Turkishness and the Turk­ish language. The interpretation of STG as a situational register is supported by the fact that the youths have achieved different levels of linguistic compe­tence in German, while they all "hypocorrect" their linguistic production in the performance of STG. The concept of hypocorrection, as introduced by Baugh (1999), originally referred to African American Standard English speakers who, in an attempt to perform an inner-city African American iden­tity, will shift style towards African American Vernacular English, resulting in the creation of hypocorrect - as opposed to hypercorrect - utterances and lin­guistic overcompensation beyond the target linguistic form. In a similar way, STG is used to mark a certain, "non-German" identity in the face of speakers who arenot Turkish. The situational identity that is created through this regis­ter use is a form of meta-identity.

STG closely resembles ethnolectic varieties, where basic stmctures are ac­quired, while phonetic features ("accent") and lexical items alone provide the "ethnic overlay" (Fennen 1997; Labov 1972). However, STG stands inde-

22 Dundes 1972; Tertilt 1997. 23 Interview in Standard German. 24 JE = Julia Eksner.

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pendently from the parents' immigrant language, and it is therefore not a Cre­ole that developed oftheir parents' speech. lt can also not be seen as a kind of substratum effect. The function of langnage has shifted from a learner or inter­language to its function as an identity marker via the emergence of a situ­ational "xenolect." A xenolect, which Holm (1988) defines as "slightly for­eignized varieties spoken natively." lt does not rely on radical restructuring of language, but on a small - "but symbolically significant" (Fennel 1997) -amount of influence from immigrant languages to render it different from the standard.

STG is employed in interactions of situational dichotomization as a regis­ter that carries xenolectic characteristics. With this it primarily seiVes as a so­cial semiotic. 25 Several short examples of naturally occurring conflict Situa­tions will seiVe to illustrate ritualized speech as social semiotic. The first situation, which we will discuss, takes place with members of the out-group.

One evening, five of the older boys were standing in the entrance of the neighborhood center. They were talking to each other in Turkish, while code switching to and borrowing from Germanall along. Because they knew each other, they presupposed each other's accents and code switching, which are both indexes of their shared location and background. For the boys the neigh­borhood center is "theirs;" it is the former "headquarters" of the local gang, the "36" and the boys know all the regulars, have keys to some of the rooms, and regard the Germans, mainly adults, who use some of the space for their dance or music practice, as outsiders. While the youths were standing in front of the building, a German man and a German woman, in their mid-thirties, appeared in the window above them. To the Turkish boys they were presuma­bly identifiable as typically "German" because of their light skin and hair, their choice of clothes, the way they moved, and the simple fact that they were not known to them as regulars. The man in the window waved to the boys, which was probably prompted by the boys holding and filming with a video camera. The boys acted on the looks of the German man as a creative index, thereby establishing an inside-outside line across the following interaction (Standard German/Berlin dialect: normal letters, STG: bold, Turkish: small caps):

C: [sweet, tempting voice] Fall ... fall ... [German man is wavingfrom a window in the building to the camera.}

T: [peiformative, Berlin dialect, loud for the camera] What kind of asparagus26

is this, I'm fucking your mother. Fuck, fuck ... [The man can 't hear what the boys are saying. He closes the window. One of the boys whist/es to get his attention. The man opens the window again.} I'm fucking your mother, yes, I'm fucking your mother. I'm fucking your mother. ÜK, HONEY, BYE BYE). [The man is waving again. The boys laugh.} Some people like it when you fuck their mothers.

25 Fennel 1997. 26 Derogative for skinny, "weak," German.

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[The German woman appears in the same window and waves like crazy. We can only guess her motives for this action .. .} Haha ... THEY ARE GIVING IT TO YOUR FATHER A LOT27

.

Somebody's tonehing you down there, right. .. ha. [laughs]

While this example might seem emde, it is both exemplary ofthe youths' lan­gnage practices, and, if looked at in more detail, shows lingnistic richness. The boys started out their comments with a rhetorical question in the local Berlin dialect, thereby both demonstrating proficiency this register, and shar­ing their assumption that the two adults in the window are Germans from Ber­lin. They then addressed the Germans in a deliberately aggressive way, shout­ing to them in a very curt and offensive form of German that appears simpli­fied. The Germans could probably overhear some of the louder comments. In two instances, when they used particularly emde insults, which they may not have felt appropriate to say to the face oftheir interlocutors (or to the camera), they switched back to Turkish (see underlined). When the Germans left the window, the boys continued their usual pattem of interaction. While the Ger­man adults might have interpreted the whole situation in terms of code (i.e. "deficient langnage skills"), the underlying dynamics were generation, ethnic­ity and dass. The boys here employed strategic or "metaphorical" switching (Blom 1972) between different codes.

In the following interactions, conflict interaction took place in a less medi­ated way, here however among youths in the in-group themselves. Because STG is not the code used for in-group conflict, we catch only short glimpses before the boys switch back to Turkish to continue the conflict or before they resolve it. In the first example, Cem (C) and several of his friends are playing computer games at the neighborhood center. A register switch from jokingly commenting on his friends to a half-serious conflict occurs. Cem is teasing Halil as "gay," because he does not act up for the camera. Halil gets up and without much ado, and no words, boxes Cem in the stomach. Cem's register switch ensues during this action (Standard German!Berlin dialect in normal letters, STG in bold, Turkish small caps):

<:,:: Yo, we're inside, man, what's up? Everybody's shooting already, yeah, come on ... yeah. You're alllazy, man ... [9em zooms in on Halil] [voice starts to get into higher pitch] What's up with you, hey you faggot. [laughs] Hey, it's you I'm talking to. Yeah. Exactly you. GET LOST, I SAID. [Halil gets up}. 'Lan!! [suddenly very high pitch, loud] Fuck off, I said, 'Lan!! [voice suddenly drops, calmer}. .. STOP.

This interaction points into the direction of how "tough talk" is used among the boys. The performance of STG can be glimpsed in the first phrase uttered by Cem, immediately after Halil attacks him. He however immediately swit­ches into Turkish (italics), since STG is not the conflict code used with in-

27 Allusion to anal penetration.

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group members. lt might also have been perceived as too aggressive for the context of originally playful in-group-conflict.

In a last example, we find STG to be used as a ritual of consensus, which again points to its role as social semiotic. In the interaction below we find a formulaic - ritualistic - exchange of phrases. STG is used in joking provoca­tion between two friends and acquaintances of the same social status. While the youths were all participating in a representation of them to the outside world (by making a video), one of the boys, Tarkan, was holding back and not really playing along. In this interaction Rahman (R) challenges Tarkan (T) in a friendly and consensual manner, thus inviting him to properly participate in the ongoing activity. STG was used as a regulative and consensual register, reminding Tarkan ofwhere he was, with whom he was hauging out and simul­taneously symbolically referring to and enacting the emblems of being "ghetto."

In this excerpt the older boys are spending their Friday night by roaming through the streets of the neighborhood, documenting their paths with a video camera. Rahman (R) is filming the others and then focuses in on Tarkan (T). Tarkan makes a sign of refusal with his hands, but Rahman continues to film Tarkan. He then initiates interaction by teasingly addressing Tarkan in STG (while before they had been speaking Turkish). Tarkan picks up the genre and responds with a strong accent hirnself (and exactly despite the fact that he is one ofthe youths who is almost completely bilingual):

R: [loud] "What's going ooonn [= stretched sound] here, what's going ooonn, heey ... [higher pitch] heey ... what' s goin ooonn here, what' s going ooonn ... Y ou a [higher pitch] victim or were you victimized?"

T: [loud] 'Maaan! You a victim you.' R: [loud, high pitch] "Or did you, or did you victimize?"28

Ralnnan makes these switching practices explicit and points to the performa­tive efficacy of using stylized speech. We want to cite this excerpt in length, because several of the social relations and issues addressed in this paper are also addressed in his statement:

JE: Be tough? Yes, I become angry too, but I don't know if I do the same things as you do, or you. How do you do it? Show me. What would you say then?

R: [dismissive] I don't know whati'd say. JE: Well I would talk like this: Hey, are you stupid or what? Don't mess with

me! That's what I would say. R: Nuuh, I would say: HASIKTIR 'LAN! JE: What? R: HASIKTIR 'LAN! JE: What does that mean?

28 The trope of "victim" is a very strong one in this ingroup. Rahman tries a word­play by tuming the passive "victim" into an active verb "victimize," which in German obtains the meaning of "sacrifice." The intended meaning is "Did you victimize somebody?"

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R: Fuck off. JE: But would you say that to a German? R: To a German I would do, yes, I wouldn't say anything, I wouldjust hit him in

his face, that's it. Immediately. JE: Ifyou wouldn't hit him, though, but you would talk. R: I would then use such ... such a strange accent and say: 'LAN SIKTIR ... JE: What strange accent? R: Like Turkish-German, somehow. All different. How should I... how should I

explain this. I don't know how I can explain this, but I would say, 'LAN SIK­TIRjhigh pitch, curt} GIT ...

JE: And why would you stress it that way? R: Because he's supposed to take me serious. JE: And he will take you serious, ifyou stress it that way? R: Yes, yes. Exactly. JE: Why is that? R: Because he's afraid then. [ ... ] JE: And then I also wanted to know why you think this is this way. Why is it es­

pecially intimidating? R: Because you come across hard somehow. With that I want to show, that I'm

serious, and then it happens, d'you understand?

In this interview excerpt we can observe how Rahman, just as Murat earlier, stresses the efficacy of langnage as performative/performance. Speech acts in STG can thus be understood as performative in the sense described by Austin (Austin 1975). The youths understand utterances in STG as acts in an interac­tive continuum. To sum up, discourse about liminality, in conjunction with everyday life and labor experience, is self-reflexively appropriated and mapped onto langnage to index collective group identity and express (linguis­tic) difference from Germans and what they represent. In using different speech styles in different contexts, "we" and "they"-codes are enacted; they reflect culturally constructed Oppositions between categories of speakers. Dif­ferent codes are employed to index situational shifting identities: in using standard German, migrant children stress their equality and rights to occupa­tion or political rights. In using their non-native langnages, the familial back­ground, or the cultural heritage and connection to it, is stressed. In using styl­ized German, the authority of all images and discourses connected to it, is in­voked and a youth identity of deviance and "othemess" is presented. At the same time, this novel form of speech is not only symbolic of a newly forming social entity, but also instrumental in creating it,29 i.e. while STG arises from a position of liminality in German society, it is also instrumental in symboli­cally and materially reproducing this liminality.

Mediational processes in para-phrasing Where the Turkish youth described above self- stereotyped as talking

"hard," in acts of contestation, the mediational work of the Mexican immi­grant youth with whom we worked might be characterized metaphorically as ways of talking "soft." On the surface, these practices may appear diametri-

29 Gall987.

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cally opposed. But we want to argue that these divergent practices arise from similar relationships between participants and stmctures of power; they only represent different ways of engaging with those stmcturations of power.

In some (though by no means all) mediational encounters children are ex­pected to speak on behalf of their farnilies to people who have the power to offer or withhold a range of resources, goods, information, or other services. The children that we worked with had translated for their parents in schools, government and public aid agencies, doctor' s offices, as well as stores and restaurants. (They also engaged in many private translation acts at home with their family; these were different kinds of mediational events that we have analyzed elsewhere; they do not involve the same kind of "soft talk" that we see in public encounters.) In their efforts to secure resources for their families, children in these encounters sometimes exaggerate politeness norms and sof­ten their parents' words. As Luz, a 19-year-old who had translated for her farnily for many years put it in an interview: "I became a huge 'May I help you' kind of person." Luz talked of softening her father's "vulgar" language when she translated for him:

Once we got into the office an English speaking person would ask my dad questions and even though he understands lots of English he made me answer the questions. And that wasn't too easy hecause I had to interpret what my dad wanted me to say without sounding rude or ignorant. My dad doesn't speak proper Spanish either so I had to watch what I was going to say to this person carefully. I couldn't use the de­rogatory comments my dad had so I had to sort of fix what he wanted me to say to the person. So I just had to he like, 'Oh my father is very upset hecause he paid this much and hla, hla, hla.

This "soft talk" involves a careful balancing of seemingly Contradietory goals. Luz is attempting to protect the image of her father, express her own view­point, advocate for her father' s rights, but avoid the kind of confrontation that could keep the farnily from seenring the resources they need. She describes another time when she filed a complaint on behalf of her mother when apply­ing for social service benefits:

And it's like what do you say? I can't say the lady was a meany you know. I can't say things like that. I have to like, watch what I say and things like that. So then I put that my mother was feeling uncomfortahle with the lady there. I remernher that day and I remernher the tension I felt as I listened to my mom angrily complain ahout the lady, and the pressure I felt to translate properly. I didn't know what to say. Iwanted the complaint to sound like it came from a grown-up, my mother, hut I also wanted to stress how rude she was. But then again, I didn't want to he rude my­self. I ended up writing that she was very impatient with our situation and that my mom felt very uncomfortahle with her and that it was hard for her to express herself and to understand the lady. I made it sound grown-up-like, hut I stressed the main point.

While this mitigated language may be most commonly applied when soliciting aid from government agencies, the youth we observed also softened and ed­ited their parents' words when they translated for them in seemingly more be-

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nign public encounters, such as in stores. 30 Beatriz described going with her mother to shop for gloves:

And my mother would say, you know, ask the lady for the certain type of gloves, and I would say, 'It doesn't exist.' You know, making it up. Because my mother ... would ask somebody to assist her, but she' d know exactly what was the material that she wanted, and I of course had no idea, no clue, so I would tell the lady, 'My mother is looking for these type of gloves,' and she would look at me like I was nuts. And of course I was saying it the way my mom was saying it, and it wasn't correct. It wasn't being pronounced correctly. So then, I would look her straight at my mom, and the lady, everybody was frustrated. And my mother would just point, having the lady take out all these different gloves, and my mother would say tell her that these are a bit too small and I need them a size bigger.

Beatriz told of changing her mother's words in order to minimize the annoy­ance that she saw her mother causing for the store clerk. Her modifications al­so seem designed to improve her mother's image vis-a-vis the clerk: "I thought she was being a nuisance and I thought, 'I don't want this lady to think that way about my mom. I saw it as protecting her image." She gave an example of how she would modify her mother's words: "I mean she would say, 'Oh, this leather feels too rough.' And I would have to tell the lady that, and I would, I would change it a little bit and I would say that, 'Oh, she says these don't fit."'

Illustration 2: Journal entry by a 10-year-old "para-phraser"31

30 The 10- to 12-year-old children that we worked with seemed less able to engage in such metalinguistic and metacultural reflections.

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We see this kind of mediation in interaction in an audio-taped situation re­corded by 11-year-old Estela. In this encounter Estela is in a music store with her father, who wants to rent a musical instrument to play in a band with other men from his hometown. Estela translates while the store clerk points to a number of instmments, indicating their prices, but providing little other in­formation. An analysis of the first part of this encounter is developed in Rey­nolds and Orellana (under review); we argue there that the clerk's emphasis on the cost of the instrument seems shaped by his assumptions about this fam­ily' s ability to pay. In another segment of the transcript, we see a further em­phasis on the cost of the instruments, even as the salesperson picks up on what he assumes the father "owes" to others:

Dad: I know! But I owe, I... Salesperson: You owe Victor? Dad: Y eah, I (have) money in the bank but I wanted credit.

This emphasis on the family' s ability to pay frames the initial encounter and continues to mark the entire event. Following the description of instmments, Estela helps her father to fill out a lengthy application for store credit. This in­volves deciphering the meanings of things like "monthly and gross earnings;" "source of income;" "applicant's employer; if military showbrauch and pay grade." During the long process of filling out the form, Estela turns the tape recorder off and on several times. Later she explained to the research team that this was because her father was getting upset and saying bad words. She wanted to edit the bad words from the tape. This suggests that Estela was awa­re of her power to mediate her father's image vis-a-vis the research team as well as vis-a-vis the store personnel.

The store clerk, who provides no assistance with the application, takes the completed form and shortly retums to announce that credit has been denied. We take up at this point in the transcript to show how Estela- who may well be exhausted from the translation and emotion work (Hochschild 1983) that she has done - continues to serve as mediator between her father and the clerk. In this next section of the transcript, Estela and her father try to negoti­ate another form of payment. Here Estela seems not only to mediating her fa­ther's words to the salesperson, she seems to work as well to soften the sales­person' s words to her father.

31 Text in the picture: April 30, 2001 - Today I translated to my mom about a letter that they send her in my brothers school. The letter said that my brother should bring gym shoes with rubber buttons, only. It said that we cannot send with san­dals, flip flops, jelly shoes, or open toe shoes. How I tell about translating is be­cause every time I translate I feel like I am talking to somebody. Text in the bubbles (left to right): 1. I wonder why they can't bring sandals, flip flops, jelly shoes, or open toe shoes? 2. You shouldn't let Chavito bring sandals, flip flops, jelly shoes, or pen toe shoes. 3. Ok.

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Salesperson: Estela: Salesperson: Estela: Salesperson: Estela:

Dad:

This is a thousand. Dice que eso es, es mil. [He says that this is, this is a thousand.] With tax. Con las taxas. Y ou got enough on there? Dice que si tienes um, um, dinero que puedas. [He says that if you have, um, um, money that you can.] Yeah! I, I. ..

The salesperson has asked a challenging question: "Y ou got enough money on there (a credit card)?" Estela frames the question more optimistically to her fa­ther, by saying: "If you have money you can." She is cut off by her father, however, who has tracked the English conversation, and who seems to react indignantly to the salesperson' s implied suggestion that he might be buying something he cannot afford.

Estela goes on to negotiate for her father about how he might pay for this instrument. The salesperson suggests putting it on a store credit card, but Este­la's father sees this as essentially the same as paying cash, and says so: "En­tonces es como, es como pargarlo en cash" ("Then it's like, it's like paying in cash."). Estela softens the potentially challenging nature of this statement when she renders it in English to the sales clerk by converting it to an am­biguous statement that could be read as something her father intends to or wants to do: "He' s like, he 's paying in cash."

But Estela' s father speaks in English to clarify that he wanted credit; Este­la, still taking up the role of mediator, repeats his statement in English to the clerk. The clerk merely says he is sorry. Estela's father does not press the point further, and both Estela and her dad thank the man as they leave the store without credit and without the instmment that they came to rent. Estela ends this stretch of soft talk on a cheery note as she renders an upwardly in­flected "Bye!"

Dad: Estela: Salesperson: Dad: Salesperson: Dad: Salesperson: Estela: Salesperson:

I, I wanted credit. He wants credit. Yeah, I'm sorry. OK! That's okay. But, uh, well, you know where we're at. So ... Y eah, ok, thank you. Thank you. Uhuh, bye! Bye.

The two cases we have presented reveal that even though youth counter and redefine hegemonic interpellations, they are not empowered to change the present structure. Nor for the most part do they seem aware of its existence or of the processes that they are involved in. The effects of stmcturation are strongly discemable in the use and pragmatics of STG. Similarly, they are evident in the ways that child translators sometimes take up voices of author­ity and represent those to their parents. We may therefore see the youths as (more or less) unconscious historical actors that are responding to and influ-

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ential of their historical context without being aware of the implications of their actions. However, as our discussion of the youths' recoding of dominant discourse and their social practices has shown, in trying to understand the creation of new vernaculars, and specifically STG, we cannot completely stress the impact of stmcture either. Rather, we would agree with Woolard, who states that "linguistic practices stem from someplace in between both these poles" (Woolard 1985: 745f.).

Building on this, we understand immigrant youths' cultural practices to be both powerless and empowered, i.e. youths are constrained by structure while they may create spaces in which to defy it as well. Neither force is absolute, nor totally absent. For example, when children translate for their parents, a practice that is shaped by stmctural conditions of inequality, they at the same time may experience power over langnage and over participants in the trans­lating event. In contrast, readings that understand liminality in terms of "defi­ance" and oppositional youth cultures only, particularly in the U.S. tradition (Bucholtz 2002), tend to not consider the constrained nature, i.e. the at least partial powerlessness, of these practices. 32

Further, such readings play down the fact that these practices are a reac­tion to stmctures created by dominant adult practices in their lives, in our cases stereotypes about Turks in Germany or global immigration flows that propel Latino laborers and their families in the United States. In these read­ings the role of agency is over-emphasized at the expense of real-life power relations and constraints posed by these. For example, current thinking about youth practices carefully avoids a developmental teleology and asserts that these adolescent practices are focused on themselves and are not simply a de­velopmental stage on the way to adulthood.33 These current understandings of adolescent liminality emphasize the "here-and-now ofyoung people's experi­ence, the social and cultural practices through which they shape their world" (Bucholtz 2002: 532), and the research attention is shifted to "inside the bor­derlands, inside liminality" (Rampton 1999: 8). However, such theoretical ap­proaches tend to neglect the fact that tobe liminal is always tobe liminal to something; liminality is inherently a position of relatedness. In other words, to see youth practices as self-contained disregards what makes the practice hap­pen: the power of adults over those acting on the "inside" (i.e. the juxtaposi­tion of communitas to stmcture). Individuals are part of the societal "market­place" in which power and status is accorded according to possession of vari­ous forms of capital (Bourdieu 1977). The powerthat comes with ownership of different forms of "dominant capital," here adult group membership that is linked to certain practices, cannot simply be ignored or seen as disconnected from the practices on the "inside" ofyouth culture/communitas.

32 Defiant hybrid practices as described earlier by Hall and more recently by Rarnp­ton and others (such as immigrant youths' langnage practices) are not liminal practices, they arerather liminoid (Rampton 1999; Turner 1974 ).

33 Haavind2001; Rogoff2003.

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Further, to play down the idea that adolescent practices are in some ways directed towards adult practices (under the impact of transformation and change ), and even defined by their exclusion from the adult sphere, is to equally deny the power relations inherent in adult -adolescent relations. Y outh practices are often not aimed to be the adult "real thing," but they are still cre­ated within and parallel to a hegemonic social sphere that is perceived as "adult" and that seiVes as reference point. They are exactly characterized by their difference in ideology and practice to the "official" adult world (in both rninority and dominant culture ). Sirnilarly, studies of youth cultures in differ­ent contexts have found that divisions between youth and elder and "conflict­ual and consensual" are often not clearly differentiated, but permeable and flexible. 34

Theories that reduce adolescent practices to distinctive practices and iden­tities which are not oriented to adults at all, assume adolescents to exist in an enclave, influenced and unconcerned with their membership in larger society, and neglect to see that identities are cmcially made in opposition.35 This does not necessarily imply that youth cultures and practices should be reduced to the notion of"oppositional youth cultures" or on the other hand to mere irnita­tions of adult culture. Rather the point here is that there is mutual influence of both, adult and adolescent practices, on each other. Adolescent culture is cre­ated in reaction to adults' norms and behaviors, and adult culture is a result of adolescent practices. But it is powerthat defines the stmcture within which youths create these practices.

Change and multiplicity

Turner' s theory of lirninality is fundamentally about processes surrounding the change of status of individuals in society; hence it is a theory about chan­ge. While Turner discussed the structural conditions that make possible indi­vidual change, via the creation of communitas and anti-structure, he was pri­marily concerned with the individual's trajectory in this process. However, as discussed above, the concept of lirninality has been considered particularly with attention to socio-historical processes of change, as for example con­nected to global imrnigration flows.

In its application to immigrant experiences and conditions of culture con­tact, there therefore has been a change in unit of analysis: while for Turner each individual experiences structure and communitas, the concept is now ap­plied not only to the individual developmental cycle, but to groups of indi­viduals and their access to group membership. The effect of this is that, be­cause the phenomena described are different in kind, the temporal aspect ("phase")- which is a cmcial aspect of Turner's concept of liminal phase and its cyclic character, is pushed to the background or lost.

34 Bucho1tz 2002. 35 Barth 1969; E1wert 1989, 1995; Irvine & Ga11999.

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We therefore face another paradox: the concept of liminality was origi­nally conceived as a way to describe one phase in a teleological and unidirec­tional process, yet now it is being applied to situations that are neither teleo­logical nor unidirectional. The liminal cycle in its developmental usage is usu­ally completed and does not stop in the liminal phase, i.e. adolescents who are members of the group biologically and socially mature at a certain point in time. On the level of collective membership this teleology cannot hold tme. Many authors legitimately claim that there are cases in which collective mem­bership is not established and groups of people permanently remain marginal to dominant society. In fact, this is exactly the case to which the concept of liminality is most often applied. The question is then if this marginality can be conceptualized as (permanent) liminality, as it so often is, or if this might make it in some ways the wrong concept for the analyses for which it is used.

One problern with this conceptualization is that this analytical lens takes entities such as cultural groups, and cultural group memberships in these enti­ties, as a given, and ignores that "group" is basically a term for people en­gaged in a shared set of cultural practices (with diffuse and changing bounda­ries). Another concern we have isthat the idea of a permanent liminality im­plies the notion of permanently non-liminal entities or states, a notion that contradicts history and historical change. lt fundamentally neglects the fact that cultures are not historically stable units and that in fact all new cultural groups of practice have been produced by deviance from established, official, or institutionalized forms of practice.

Further, the cyclic notion of change inherent in Turner' s conceptualization is lost when the notion of (implicitly) permanent liminality is used to describe the "failed" integration of immigrant and minority individuals and groups. When immigrants try to gain access to group membership claimed by domi­nant society, society often excludes them. We do not find a cyclic integration into and release from stmcture as described in Turner' s model. What this fis­sure shows is that an individual can become part of stmcture, if, and only if s/he has been part of this stmcture before. This is implicitly assumed in Turner, but it is not made explicit.

The negotiation of power and access to resources in immigrant communi­ties may hence lead to a superficially permanent liminal state. However, this analysis is stopped in its tracks because it does not consider larger historical changes that are the result of these liminal practices. Practices, which are not part of the categories and classifications available within structure, are ini­tially labeled as liminal. However, with time and historical change, new cate­gories are created. Permanently liminal practices become categorized, and to some extent legitimate, non-liminal states. This is exactly what happens with many of the "hybrid" practices that are described as liminal.

Liminality refers to temporary exclusion, but these are permanent, new so­cial practices. They are new cultural forms. lt is exactly in this way that cul­ture is created and change has happened throughout history. The underlying semiotic process in this has been called fractal recursion (Irvine & Gal 1999).

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There is a fissure - either forced or voluntary - from the structure. The liminal personwill be part of an alternative, new stmcture; a new locus for identity is created. lt is because of this that immigrant youths with newly consolidated identities are not tmly liminal - i.e. homogeneous, powerless, obedient, and without social status. The youth find a voice and constmct new identities, i.e. they have defined and created new structures from which to speak and act.

Although the application of the concept of liminality to phenomena on a sociallevel seems intuitively clear, we still regard it to be conceptually diffi­cult and possibly misleading. But also on the individual level, Turner' s con­ceptualization might stmcture ways of thinking about individual change that lead to the erasure of the important processes surrounding development across the life span. Turner, in his original conception of liminality, focused on the transitions between stages and the movement of individuals from one societal stage to another, such as from childhood to adolescence. This is in accordance with (cognitive) developmental stage theories such as Piaget's (1975). Turner suggests a relatively unproblematic progression across stages, with the first step involving a separation from the starting identity (e.g. "child") and place­ment into the limen. From there, cultural rituals assist the movement through the "flat" or "ambiguous" stage before official recognition in the new category (e.g. "adult"). Similarly, for Piaget it is a "crisis," a kind of liminal phase, through which the child has to pass in order to arrive at the next stage. How­ever, developmental stage theories have been exposed to substantive critique on the basis of assumptions of teleology and the normative stmcture proposed by the chronological order ofthese stages.

As with the "kanak sprak" of Turkish youth in Germany, the phenomenon of child langnage brokering has not only gamered the attention of sociolin­guists; it has also been a topic of discussion in the U.S. media, and has re­ceived some consideration in political debates as well. In popular discussions (and as well in much research), the focus has been on the burdens that this mediational work imposes on youth, insofar as it takes children into the realm of adult responsibilities, knowledge and information. In popular and academic work alike, there is discussion of the "adultification" of children and of "role reversals" between parent and child. The perspective is premised on particular Western, middle-class cultural notions of adult-child relations, in which chil­dren are viewed as relatively helpless objects requiring adults' protection and socialization (Zelizer 1985). From a "mainstream" cultural perspective, chil­dren speaking for adults in "adult" domains of knowledge can present itself as a violation of established orders. Efforts to regulate against such disorder in­clude recent legislation that has been proposed in the state of California deny­ing state funding to any medical clinic that allows children of clients to act as translators. Our point here is not to judge such legislation or the cultural view­points that frame it; rather it is to point out the anxiety that may be provoked for some people when immigrant youths speak from the positions that they have found themselves placed in.

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Turner's modelfurther invites closer consideration of the ways in which liminal persons are considered to pass in and out pre-defined stages. While Turner' s model may appropriately characterize the transition to adulthood in cultures that have preserved relative homogeneity or cultural "consensus," it is less useful for understanding the liminal experiences ofyouth in places where there is a juxtaposition of different beliefs about the nature of particular sta­ges, and of divergent practices to identify or transform them, such as is often the case in immigrant communities. In immigrant communities, individuals' and families' beliefs and practices about childhood, adolescence and adult­hood, and the transitions between them, may diverge from each other as well as from those of the dominant culture, and rites of passage that ensure smooth transitions across stages may be absent or Contradietory.

We have discussed earlier how Bucholtz (2002) identifies a shift in an­thropological theory away from transitory processes and toward an interest in adolescent youth culture in its own regard. Increasingly, researchers artend to age-based cultural practices. However, this conceptualization does not elimi­nate the inherent problern of "stage theories;" it only fixes attention on the practices that take place within a given stage, however defined.

Research on hybridity, as detailed above, represents a similar critique within cultural studies. Here, the focus is on the nature of hybrid practices, on the ways in which new cultural forms are produced, and on the mixing of cul­tures; gone are the assumptions of smooth progression from one cultural ori­entation to another, of neat processes of assimilation or acculturation. But even here, there remains some tendency in the field to consider hybridity as a resolution of stages in itself. For example immigrant youth may pass through a stage of "bicultural ambivalence" before resolving their cultural identities. The ambivalence stage would constitute the limen, biculturalism the resolu­tion.

Despite the shifts toward an interest in practices and recognition of ambi­guities, complexities, and hybridities, we would argue that stage-based models of development, such as Turner's model, still permeate research on adoles­cence across the disciplines. The very concept of adolescence is based on a stage theory of human development, and it provides inadequate recognition of variance across cultures, contexts, time, and situations in the marking of this category, or its meaning.

The youth we studied- rauging in age from 10 tol8 - are in a contested zone between childhood and adulthood. How they are seen - as children, ado­lescents, youth, or young adults - is shaped by context and setting (the larger context of racialized immigration in each country as well as more specific set­tings such as those of home, school, street, or langnage brokering encounters). lt is shaped as well by the linguistic and social practices these youth engage in, even as these in turn are influenced by the youth' s readings of their social contexts. For example, the Turkish youth's "hard" talk can be seen as both a response to and a reinforeerneut of a particular view of these youth as "over­mature" or "street-wise" - as not children but not young adults either. The

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youth's words and actions arenot oriented toward assimilating unproblemati­cally into the (mainstream) adult world, and they arenot read as such by out­siders.

The work that immigrant youth do as langnage brokers, on the other hand, represents a different kind of threat to the established order; these youth are readily positioned as "children" who have been thrust prematurely into adult worlds. Their innocence is highlighted, and they may be seen as immature in­stead of over-mature. (Note: neither conception of their maturity may match how the youth view themselves, nor how their families view them.) Part of what these children must negotiate in their mediational work is how to speak appropriately as children to adults, even as they speakfor those adults to each other.

Whether openly contesting, or attempting to mediate, it is the voices of li­minal subjects, arising from theirbetwixt- and betweenness, that is disquieting to the public.

But in neither case do we see clean separations from the stage of "child­hood" into the limen, or neat transitions into adulthood. And yet diverse con­temporary Iiteratures - in anthropology, sociology, psychology, and educa­tion, as well as Turner' s conceptualization via the concept of liminality as un­der discussion here - still treat adolescence as a stage, and assimilation as a process, that is teleological in nature and that presumes the resolution of limi­nal tensions.

Lastly, we would like to address the issue of multiplicity. For Turner indi­viduals are simultaneously members of many different groups, while each in­dividual experiences stmcture and communitas at multiple times in his/her li­fe. Turner therefore recognizes that liminal positionalities do not include all aspects of a person's identity and that they hence do not translate into liminal­ity in all spheres ofthe individual's life. Nevertheless, Turner's work does not pursue this multiplicity and there is a lack of descriptive and theoretical atten­tion to how each individual, and each social group, experiences liminality to different extents, in different combinations, and at different points in time.

Possibly as a result ofthisoriginal conceptualization, the way in which the concept of liminality is often mapped onto immigrant youths' experiences does little to help us understand how these liminal positionalities differ. As our case studies show, multiple liminalities as adolescent, gendered, bilingual, ethnicized immigrants are based on a complex system of memberships, exclu­sions and transitional phases. lt is a qualitatively different experience to be a fluently bilingual male Latino adolescent in the U.S. or a Turkish dominant girl in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Similarly, there is a qualitative difference between being a monolingual German speaking Turkish boy living in an ethnic enclave in Berlin (a rare case, but existent) and abilingual Latino boy forced to inter­act in a predominantly English-speaking environment on his farnilies' behalf.

The environments and contexts in which children and adolescents live gi­ve meaning to the practices that they are involved in and this makes for the subjective experience of liminality. These qualitative differences of power and

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powerlessness are conflated in the concept of liminality as it is connnonly used.

To sum up, we want to alert the reader to the pitfalls, which are inherent in the use of the concept of liminality, bothin regard to the implicit conceptuali­zation of change and multiplicity. In applying the concept and its assumptions to our case studies, we show that it is not able to account for the experiences of these youths and that it simultaneously continues to stmcture our thinking about them. Even more than in our consideration of issues of power in the conceptualization of liminality, it is in the domains of change and multiplicity that this concept seems to side-track current conceptualizations.

Conclusion

The analysis of linguistic practices is ultimately the study of how cultural groups are positioned in society and how they respond to this positioning. While the practices described in this chapter emerge from different contexts and are created by different participating groups, they both speak strongly to the impact of power relations on immigrant youths' everyday lives. The ef­fects of power inequality, in the form of low socio-economic standing, and lack of symbolic, social and educational capital, have emerged at multiple points in our discussion of these youths' practices. Wehave shown how Tur­ner's concept of liminality is in many ways on target when applied to immi­gration contexts, particularly because it considers the lack of status of the liminal personae. Nevertheless, the difficulty with resting the analysis of con­temporary immigrant experiences on this concept is that it inadequately ad­dresses other aspects of those experiences, such as change and multiplicity. On the other hand, contemporary research in the fields of sociolinguistics and anthropology that further develops Tumer's concept by considering these di­mensions, has often under-theorized the central aspect of power inequality in the everyday experiences of immigrant youths.

What the field should be working towards then, we propose, is a theory that addresses immigrant youths' experiences particularly as they relate to power. Such a theory is well-advised to consider and make use of both Tur­ner' s theory and contemporary deconstmctivist theories, but it needs to push further in the conceptualization of these experiences. As we have shown, the concept of liminality is in many ways not the right one for the phenomena we are trying to understand. We discussed some of the elements that such a the­ory would need to address, including the role of change, and the multiplicity of liminal experiences. Further, this theory needs to conceptualize power ine­quality as non-transitory experience ( even as it is continually contested). Turner' s concept of liminality has a temporally bound character and does not get at this permanence. The strong importance we accord to considering power inequality lies in the fact that almost all cultural and linguistic practices that research in innnigration contexts tries to understand, are fundamentally

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influenced by this experience of power inequality. Some practices, such as the ones discussed in this chapter, are even centrally shaped by such experiences.

We therefore believe that in order to understand immigrant youths' lan­gnage practices, it is not enough to understand adolescence, cultural practices and the constmction of ethnic identities as separate constmcts. Rather, be­cause immigration contexts are (post)-colonial spaces, in which different groups mutually engage in Contestations over the status quo of power distribu­tion, it is important to understand how power weaves through the different as­pects of immigrant youths' lives and personaes and how it shapes their ulti­mate stmcturing.

A theory of immigrant youths' experiences should consider multiple inter­secting historical trajectories of subjects who are differently positioned in rela­tion to structures of power, and their dimensions in everyday interactions36

. lt should enable us to understand both power Contestation in immigration con­texts, and its relational aspects, while avoiding the conceptual traps we have outlined above. With this we would be then analyzing activity settings, in which actors in particular contexts engage in shared practices, or activities, that are subject to continuous change on the social and individuallevel.37 An analysis of the activity settings in which immigrant youths engage in a range of linguistic and cultural practices would then allow us to avoid being side­trapped by essentializing ideas about identity or development, or blindness towards the shaping effects of power on these practices.

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CHILDHOOD DYNAMICS IN ACHANGING CULTURE.

EXAMPLES FROM THE XAVANTE PEOPLE OF

CENTRAL BRAZIL

Angela Nunes

The ethnographic data and reflections presented in this paper1 are not about a people living through a migration process, but about a group of people in Cen­tral Brazil who were prevented from continuing their migrant way of life and had to settle down. They still suffer from the consequences of the sudden and violent change in all aspects of their sociallives caused by having to give up a semi-nomadic existence that had determined their way of life for centuries. With a great deal of effort, however, they are finding ways to mend what was almost destroyed. Their hopes lie in the children. They say children can better bridge the past with the future. They say children have a wisdom that adults do not know much about.

Indigenous children and the Anthropology of Childhood

Despite efforts during the last 15 years to acknowledge the child as a social agent and childhood as a social phenomenon in the social and educational sci­ences, there is still a need to intensify and diversify the research that reveals the participation of children in the (re-)construction of sociallife, in any soci­ety. Expanded ethnographic research on childhood as such may not be the so­lution in and of itself, but theoretical and methodological consolidation of this new field of study will not be possible without it. Within this new theoretical framework, childhood is not considered a unique and closed concept but var­ied dependent on the social particularities of a given group. Thus, it must be understood from an intercultural perspective. 2 Findings resulting from re­search pursued within the framework of this approach are aimed to go beyond

I am grateful to Lynda Seeley and Helena Briosa e Mota for reviewing this pa­per, and to Rosario Carvalho for the discussions on the intercultural education programme for indigenous peoples in Brazil.

2 See, i.e., Caputo 1995; Hardman 1973; Hirschfeld 2002; James, Jenks & Prout 1997; James & Prout 1990, 1995; Jenks 1996; Mead 1975; Qvortrup 1994; Toren 1993.

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theoretical contributions; they also aim at shaping the direction of childhood policies world wide. 3

Indigenous children, however, have received less attention than any other group of children both by scientists and by the different organizations engaged in improving children' s living conditions and ensuring their rights. The last UNICEF report specially dedicated to indigenous children, published in Octo­ber 2003, states that:

Araund the world in rural and urban areas alike, indigenous children frequently con­stitute one of the most disadvantaged groups, and their rights - including those to survival and development to the highest standard of health, to education that re­spects their cultural identity, and to protection from abuse, violence and exploitation - are often compromised. At the same time, however, indigenous children possess very special resources: they are the custodians of a multitude of cultures, languages, beliefs and heritage. As this Digest discusses, the most effective initiatives to pro­mote the rights of indigenous children build upon these very elements. Such initia­tives recognize the inherent strength of indigenous communities, families and chil­dren, respect their dignity and give them full voice in all matters that affect them. 4

This paper is based on long-term anthropological field research on indigenous childhood I conducted in Brazil. lt tries to shed some light on a subject that is still struggling to find its place in the field of recent international childhood studies, but also in the field of more general ethnological studies of indige­nous societies in Brazil.5

Institutional support of childhood issues in Brazil has mostly concentrated on poor children who abound in the streets of big cities and who have been considered a serious social problern for decades. 6 As a consequence, these "problematic children" increasingly became the focus of attention among Bra­zilian educators, psychologists, jurists, and social workers. Sociologists did

3 Stephens 1995. 4 Innocenti Digest!Unicef 2003: 34. 5 Presently there are 216 different indigenous peoples living in Brazil in varied

contact situations with the non-Indian Brazilian population, also termed the na­tional society. Brazilian indigenous people speak araund 180 different languages and the last census estimated a population of 350,000 persans (Ricardo 2000). According to Law 6.001 from December 19th 1973, "Indian[ ... ] is defined as any individual with pre-Colombian descent or origin, who identifies himlherself, or is identified as belanging to an ethnic group, whose cultural characteristics are different from the ones of the national society ," and an "indigenous community or tribal group is the set of families or Indian communities, either living in total isolation from other national community sectors or maintaining permanent or in­termittent contact with the national society without being integrated into it." This Law is currently under revision. In the meantime, the statements above are con­sidered to be valid. Anthropological literature uses "indigenous" and "Indians" as equivalent terms. The same designations are used by indigenous peo­ple!Indians in reference to themselves.

6 Alvim & Valadares 1988; Del Priore 1991, 2000; Martins 1993; Rizzini 1997a, 1997b, 2002; Rizinni 2000.

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not get involved in the debate until the 1970s7 and anthropologists have be­come engaged in the field only recently.

Dealing with so-called "street-children" or "street-kids" is certainly indis­pensable as long as there are children living on the streets. Nevertheless, con­sidering that to date only "problematic children" have been at the centre of so­cial science concems, and in view of the lack of studies dealing with indige­nous children, one may get the impression that the latter might not have re­ceived attention because they simply have no problems - at least not the type of problems that disturb the public order like those of "street-kids." Taking into consideration how distaut Indian children are from the non-Indian society in ethnic, geographic, and social terms, the question arises of what we really know about them. Do they have problems or not? Do they give rise to prob­lems or not? And as we do not have any answers so far that could appease our minds, we may ask whether - besides the potential "problems" that might be prevalent among indigenous children - there is anything else worthy of an­thropological interest concerning childhood in indigenous societies.

An evaluation of Brazilian anthropologicalliterature since the beginning of the 201

h century reveals that its contribution to the knowledge about indige­nous childhood are isolated and discontinuous. The information given is only of peripheral importance in the framework of the respective general research area. 8 Identification, systematization, and evaluation of this disperse data, which was largely obtained in the context of ascertaining data on the social organization of the different indigenous peoples, has shown how valuable it in fact is. lt opens up research questions that have not been considered in Brazil­ian anthropology so far, research questions, from which one can proceed to study indigenous childhood. 9

Recent etlmological research on indigenous childhood in Brazil is situated in the theoretical framework of the ernerging anthropology of childhood, which points out that childhood studies also serve as instmments of reflection upon present social - particularly educational, economic, juridical, health, and gender - questions that affect not just children but all others with whom they share their social world. 10

These studies have, indeed, revealed that indigenous childhood - like childhood in any society - must be studied as a topic in its own right, and that childhood in Brazilian indigenous societies is profoundly embedded in the

7 The first systematic and continuous studies by Brazilian sociologists about childhood took place at the beginning of the 1970s. One such study was ordered by the Court of Silo Paulo/Juvenile Court; the objective was to collect informa­tion about the juveniles who were provoking so many social problems (CEBRAP 1972). The other was carried out in Rio de Janeiro and had the same aims (Misse et al. 1973).

8 Nurres 1999, 2002. 9 Nurres 2004. 10 This means the child is considered a social agent. Seedetails conceming the the­

ory of an anthropology of childhood in the introduction to this book.

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other aspects of social life. 11 To a great extent, these studies strengthen the paradigm of an anthropology of childhood as proposed by James and Proue 2

that childhood should be considered an important variable in social analysis, like any other variable. They also support a child-focused anthropology as proposed by Toren, 13 who argues that studies on childhood should not simply be multiplied but should rather be an integral part of social studies about any given society so as tobe able to understand it as completely as possible.

The studies of indigenous childhood in Brazil mentioned above aim to ap­ply these theoretical considerations. They desire to shed light on the specific­ity of Brazilian ethnological research and on the specificity of its empirical object- the more than 200 indigenous groups living in Brazil. 14

Almost a decade after the beginning of the European research project Childhood as a Social Phenomenon (Qvortrup 1994), which led to sea change in social science studies of childhood, James, Jenks & Prout (1997: 26-33) identified four main approaches in contemporary childhood studies: (1) child­hood as a social construction, (2) childhood as a world aside (3) children as a minority group, (4) childhood as a component of (all) social stmctures. 15 Stud­ies about indigenous childhood can make use of all of these approaches and can contribute to their further development.

Firstly, in reference to the study of childhood as a social construction, the cultural variety and particularity of Brazilian indigenous societies constitute very diverse contexts that allow for comparative ethnographic research deal­ing with the question how childhood is socially constmcted in different set­tings.

Secondly, as a world aside, what kind of "worlds aside" children construct under different social and cultural conditions and how these differences in the

11 Cohn 2000; Lopes da Silva, Macedo & Nurres 2002; Nurres 1999, 2004. 12 James & Prout 1990: 1-34. 13 Toren 1993: 462. 14 Cardoso de Oliveira (1986, 1998) describes Brazilian anthropology as a field of

research that grew out of its particular empirical object: Indians, Africans, and Europeans. Knowledge was historically subordinated to the nature of these real objects, rather than to the nature of theory. Two traditions emerged from this specific situation: the ethnology of indigenous societies and the anthropology of the national society. Brazilian ethnology dedicated to indigenous societies started to define its particularity as scholars became aware of the fact that the classical analytical models constructed during the first half of the 20th century in Europe and based on African ethnographic data could not explain the social organisation and structure of South American indigenous societies, thus demanding the need for other explicatory models. Important contributions to this debate are the dis­cussion on dualism in the South American lowlands, carried out between Levi­Strauss (1960) and Maybury-Lewis (1960), and the analysis about the notion of Person undertaken by Kaplan ( 1977) at the XLII International Congress of Americanists, followed by Seeger et al. (1979), Lopes da Silva (1986), Cameiro da Cunha (1986), and Peirano (1991 ).

15 See details in the Introduction.

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"worlds aside" relate to the larger social and cultural context can be investi­gated.

Thirdly, on the topic of childhood as a minority group, as a socially disad­vantaged group, discriminated against and in need of political empowerment, indigenous children can seiVe as an excellent object of study - in fact they suffer from a double minority position: as children and as members of a mi­nority group.

Fourthly, concerning the study of childhood as a socio-structural category present in all societies, studies dealing with specific societies in a local con­text can pick up the "universalist-versus-particularist-debate" and obtain new insights on the different forms and meanings social phenomena take on in re­lationship to the social and cultural context of the society they are part of. With regard to the latter, studies about indigenous childhood also offer an ex­cellent framework to obseiVe the interrelation between biological develop­ment and social conditions and stmctures.

Beyond the theoretical interests mentioned above, I would like to refer to the more pragmatic aspect present in my work about indigenous childhood and Brazilian anthropology in general. Scientific aims are interrelated with the social, juridical, and political issues that affect the individuals under study; re­search also aims at improving the latter's living conditions. Brazilian anthro­pologists are not merely passive obseiVers. Instead, they have become indige­nous societies' cmcial allies and interlocutors. This approach keeps the needs of the people studied in mind and aims at giving them a voice in academic writing as well. Research about indigenous children could not be otherwise. Childhood topics in need of attention are many; most of them have not been addressed yet. I will concentrate on questions related to the introduction of formal school education in indigenous areas in Brazil, and- more specifically - in a village, where people with a semi-nomadic background, namely the Xavante, have settled down permanently.

Differentiated school education for Indian children

School education for indigenous people began in colonial times. According to Ferreira, 16 its first period lasted until the beginning of the 201

h century. lts main objective was to deny existing indigenous diversity, to extinguish cul­tures and to train the indigenous population as a working force. The Church had an important role during this phase, and forcing the Indians to leam Por­tuguese was just one of the many practices for assimilating them into Chris­tian civilization. The second period started in 1910, when the govemment cre­ated the SPI, the Servir;o de Protecr;ao ao indio (Indian Protection SeiVice ), in an attempt to stop four centuries of exterrnination. lts objective was to inte­grate the remaining indigenous population into the national society. Several

16 Ferreira 2001: 71-111.

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agendas aimed at development and at agricultural production were imposed on the indigenous population. Indians themselves had no say in any of the deci­sions made. However, most of these plans failed, including the plan to imple­ment an educational programme aimed at adjusting the schools in indigenous areas to the needs of the respective people and community. Indian schools re­mained tobe the same as the schools ofthe more established Brasilian society, but had to function under worse conditions and with less supplies. 17 Thus, school education alienated Indians from their cultural and social values by completely ignoring long established indigenous educational practices.

During the 1960s and 1970s, when Brazilian anthropology focused on in­digenous societies acquired a certain standing, Indian leaders and anthropolo­gists became aware of the fact that school education was a double-edged sword. lt helped the Indians interact with the non-Indian Brazilian society by teaching them to read and write; however, it also provoked cleavages within the indigenous populations and had a negative impact on their social equilib­rium. In establishing a solid partnership between Indians, anthropologists, and non-govermnent organizations, Indian political resistance against social dis­crimination was strengthened considerably and provided a foundation for their stmggle for a more appropriate school education system. As a result, Indians were to receive school education, which ensured respect for their cultural and linguistic particularities. Indian teachers were to receive special training and be in charge of directing their schools, teaching the Indian school children, and producing their own teaching aids and methods. Under the designation "differentiated school education for indigenous peoples," these rights were laid down in the new Constitution of the Republic proclaimed in 1988. These steps were followed by a period of active co-operation among anthropologists, linguists, historians, and NGOs, who - together with indigenous leaders and govermnent representatives - further developed desirable educational prac­tices and policies. 18

Many significant institutional initiatives followed. Indigenous communi­ties are now involved in developing projects and producing educational mate­rials to be used for teaching purposes. The number of anthropological studies dedicated to education matters has increased as well, focusing especially on linguistic and cognitive aspects, as well as on ethno-science and ethno­knowledge.19

However- and paradoxically - this academic engagement did not signifi­cantly increase our knowledge about the children in the indigenous societies under study. The latter still do not have a voice or a say when it comes to de-

17 On the history of Indians in Brazil, including the period of SPI administration, see Cameiro da Cunha 1992.

18 The different contributions to indigenous education are dealt with in: Capacla 1995; Lopes da Silva 1981, 1987; Lopes da Silva & Ferreira 200la, 200lb; Lopes da Silva & Grupioni 1995.

19 I.e. Carrara 1997; Emiri & Monserrat 1989; Ferreira 1992, 2002; Giannini 1991, 1994; Monte 1996; Tassinari 2001.

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veloping educational methods and programmes. Indigenous children, under­stood as an ontological category in their own right, 20 and as social agents hav­ing a mind to develop and express thoughts and a voice to speak,21 are just now beginning to become involved in Brazilian anthropological research. 22

Some old concepts of childhood socialization are seemingly difficult to over­come. One example is the International Labour Convention23 concerning "In­digenous and Tribai Peoples in Independent Countries," which was ratified by the President of Brazil in April 2004. Children are mentioned only twice and only when education issues are concemed.

Art. 28.1: Children belanging to the peoples concemed shall, wherever practicable, be taught to read and write in their own indigenous langnage or in the langnage most commonly used by the group to which they belang. When this is not practicable, the competent authorities shall undertake consultations with these peoples with a view to the adoption ofmeasures to achieve this objective.

Art. 29: The imparting of general knowledge and skills that will help children be­longing to the peoples concemed to participate fully and on an equal footing in their own community and in the national community shall be an aim of education for these peoples.

Respect for indigenous languages is an official policy aim, as are consulta­tions with the indigenous peoples when difficulties arise - however, it remains unsaid, whether the latter are meant to include consulting the children. Equal social participation in both the local and the national community is aimed at as well, and this is to be supported by adequate teaching. However, what chil­dren for their part can give to their communities and how they influence social life, is not mentioned. The rights of children to be heard, the comprehension and consideration of their understandings of their environment are matters, which are to date largely ignored. The International Labour Convention has considerable political importance world wide; it is regrettable that it does not consider social science findings about childhood in its statutes. One could ar­gue that the latter were formulated in 1991, at a time when research only started to bring about major changes in the approach and understanding of childhood and childhood policies. But one could also argue, on the other hand, that in the meantime the new findings could have been included gradually, ad­justing them to new and current demands. Thus, despite allpositive achieve­ments, to date, scientific as well as children's knowledge about the societies concemed are not included in the design and implementation of educational policies.

20 Jenksl996: 10. 21 James & Prout 1990: 8-9. 22 Nurres 1999, 2004; Cohn 2000; Lopes da Silva, Macedo & Nurres 2002. 23 International Labour Convention No. 169, dated 1991.

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Tbe scbool as an ideal locus for tbe meeting of cultures

In order to convey a more vivid impression of tbe issues at stake and in an at­tempt to bridge tbeory and practice, I invite tbe reader to enter the daily life of a small Xavante village called Idzö'ubu, located in the Indigenous Area San­gradouro, Mato Grosso, in Central Brazil. Here people are involved in tbe cballenging endeavour of planning an educational project.

Tbe Xavante are identified in ethnologicalliterature as one of tbe indige­nous or Indian peoples of tbe Soutb American lowlands. 24 First written sources about the Xavante- a semi-nomadic people of bunters and gatherers­date from tbe 18th century. According to tbese documents,25 tbey were con­stantly moving from one area to anotber. As they lived in temporary Settle­ments for only three to four years, surviving by undertaking seasonal excur­sions in searcb of resources, tbe Xavante could not inscribe tbeir domination upon a certain territory. Tbere is evidence, bowever, that since tbe beginning of tbe 19th century tbey were forced to migrate westward as a result of tbe oc­cupation of their territory by the state and due to agricultural expansion. Op­tions for gatbering and bunting were reduced dramatically, and survival be­came difficult. Several documents testify that tbe Xavante did not want to make contact with non-Indians. 26 At tbe end of the 1950s, after centuries of figbting, the Xavante were tired of fleeing, suffering from bunger and of not being able to eure tbe many diseases that bad befallen them. Tbey took refuge in the missions tbat bad been establisbed nearby and tbe missionaries provided them witb food and medical care. Tbe Xavante built Settlements in their neigbbourbood, but did not bave in mind to settle tbere permanently at first. However, due to tbe new territorial order that bad been establisbed in tbe meantime, it was not possible to retum to the semi-nomadic lifesytle tbey were used to. Tbus, tbe Xavante ended up being dependent on tbe missions for quite some time witb no otber cbance than to accept wbatever was imposed upon them by tbe outside world.

Only during tbe 1970s, wben Indian political awareness rose and political action set in on a wider scale did things started cbanging. Tbe Xavante today live in permanent Settlements in seven protected areas in tbe State of Mato

24 The Xavante identify themselves as A'uwe, which is also their linguistic identi­fication. It means "people" or "us." The designation Xavante is of Portuguese origin, the meaning of which is not known (Nimuendaju 1942). Although they are sometimes referred to as A'uwe-Xavante in the ethnological literature, the latter term is the one used more often, and is assumed to be their correct identifi­cation. The American anthropologist Maybury-Lewis was the first to pursue re­search among the Xavante people at the end ofthe 1960s (1967, 1979). Other important studies were undertaken by Graham (1990, 1995), and Lopes da Silva (1982, 1986, 1992).

25 See Lopes da Silva 1992. 26 On Xavante resistance to contact see Lopes 1988; Lopes da Silva 1992; Menezes

1982.

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Grosso, Central Brazil. Almost 10,000 Xavante live in more than fifty villages of 100 to 1,000 inhabitants each.27

Things have changed since the times of the first closer contacts between the Indians and the non-Indian missionaries. This becomes apparent in the words of the education project's leader in Idzö'uhu when reflecting upon 19 years of experience in the mission school - the experience of studying to be­come a primary school teacher, of working as a teacher under the guidance of the missionaries and of now being engaged in the educational programme for the indigenous population:

I thought that what I leamed at the occidental school was something that would work out, would help us to see and solve our political problems, among ourselves and also with the non-Indian society. Butthis was an illusion. I say this because we, ourselves, we have a different view. For us, leaming how to read and write means that we are prepared to defend ourselves. Not individually, but together. Leaming how to read and write means having a minimum knowledge about life in the cities and [ ... ] about relating socially with the surrounding societies, and vice-versa. How­ever, from what I can see, this occidental school, instead of helping us, is confound­ing us more. I am sure it is. The school took a big space away from the children. Be­fore, children were free to play, to leam about our culture, how to do things with their parents, to listen to the older ones. But school took this part [ of education] away from us. Children do not have any time for that because they are always busy with school tasks and activities. 28

Despite all the institutional and scientific support with regard to indigenous education, there is obviously a high degree of disappointment- the major rea­son being that it has been very difficult to put into practice what papers and documents state, or to see actual improvement. At the time we came to an agreement about my stay in the Xavante village concemed, the teacher leading the project said that until then, nobody- Indians, pedagogues, anthropologists or technicians from the Ministry of Education - knew exactly what the so­called "differentiated school education for indigenous peoples" actually was all about, nor did anyone know how to develop or apply appropriate new edu­cational programmes. One of the obstacles was that the Indian teachers had not been asked to contribute their experience and knowledge in the process, another that suggestions coming from the villages were rarely accepted or even considered at the institutional level. The teacher I talked to was well aware that local projects needed professional support as well and, knowing I was an anthropologist with an interest in education issues, he invited me to observe the establishment of the differentiated school project in progress in his village. Of all the challenges that ethnographic field work in indigenous areas poses, what made this invitation particularly challenging was that he was

27 Ricardo 2000. 28 Testimony from Lucas Ruri'5. Quated with permission. Note his usage of the

term "occidental school;" he is clearly familiar with social science terminology, which implicitly opposes westem and non-westem societies.

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looking for support to objectify what he called "giving value to children' s par­ticipation." He considered this aspect tobe absent in the govemment's educa­tional progranuues. Bothof us were in agreement: children's thoughts about the world around them, their ways of acting within and of changing it need to be known to design and implement any educational progranuue that would seiVe children's interests. If ethnology does not provide adequate information about Indian childhood, how could the education experts, sitting in their of­fices in Brasilia, consider its particularities?

The Xavante village where this project took place had around 100 inhabi­tants, living in 12 houses made of wood and palm leaves. Each was occupied by an extended nuclear family ?9 There was no electricity supply and no mn­ning water. The village was founded by an old Xavante man, together with his sons and daughters and some other families, who had decided to separate from the main Xavante village located near the mission area. This main village was established at the end of the 1950s, when the first contact between Xavante people and missionaries took place. At the time the new settlement was founded, the main village had more than 1,000 inhabitants. The teacher I was working with told me that initiating an Indian education project would not have been possible in the main village because of the dominance of the mis­sion school that was attended by all children, and because of internal dis­agreements among some of the Xavante political factions. lt is common prac­tice among the Xavante for a group to split for demographic or political rea­sons- a practice that has become morefrequent since the semi-nomadic exis­tence came to an end. In the village where I collected my data, the separation from the old village was a decisive step towards autonomy, and it was started by developing an educational project. The main objectives ofthis project were to:

• rescue the traditional Xavante knowledge developed as semi­nomads and to re-activate social and cultural practices already in a process of erosion - partly by adjusting them to the changes caused by ending their semi-nomadic Iifestyle and becoming permanently settled.

• reflect upon the new knowledge gathered in the years of contact with non-Indian people -like the Portuguese language, school edu­cation, access to media, new technologies and different behaviours.

29 Xavante social organisation is based on two exogamous moieties that correspond to two clans. They follow a patrilineal rule of descent and an uxorilocal rule of residence. This dual social organisation is crossed by a complex system of age­and class-sets that, according to Maybury-Lewis (1967), are crucia1 for the un­derstanding of the socia1 structure of the Xavante. Cf. Graham 1990, 1995; Lopes da Si1va 1983, 1986 and Maybury-Lewis 1979.

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• combine both forms of knowledge in a way that takes into account whatever is advantageaus in order to be prepared for dealing with the outside world while at the sametime not losing one's own cul­tural heritage. The school as an open place for the whole commu­nity was meant to serve as an ideallocus for this meeting and mix­ing of cultures.

• create one's own didactic materials and to serve as an example for other Xavante communities in order to contribute to the develop­ment of differentiated school education for indigenous peoples in general, and to communicate Xavante culture and knowledge to wider B razilian society.

The project was to be carried out by its leader, acting as mentor and co­ordinator, and by two other Xavante teachers: a woman working with children aged four to ten and a man working with children aged eleven to fourteen. They told methat their hope to keep Xavante culture alive depended on what the old men and women could pass on to the children. The teachers, as the in­termediate generation that grew up under the influence of the missionaries and the missionary school, would merely be the ones preparing the ground for this endeavour. 30 They hoped that the children would stimulate their farnilies to recall Xavante values and practices already abandoned or forgotten and - at the same time - to become aware of and prepare to deal with the changes and demands that had occurred with time. They believed that children were more open-minded and adjustable to what was new or unknown in general -whether it derive from without or from within their own culture and society. Thus, children could re-activate abandoned and almost forgotten Xavante knowledge and link it to the knowledge of modern life. Children were to give life to the traditional Xavante past by incorporating it into the present and thereby preparing it for the future.

What made this ambitious project innovative and different from the others I knew was the central and strategic position of the children in it - as recep­tors, conductors and creators of culture and knowledge. The Xavante teachers' perception of culture as a process was in line with Cameiro da Cunha, who said: "What we must guarantee for future generations is not the preservation of cultural products, but the preservation of the capacity for cultural produc-

30 For several decades, missionary boarding-schools existed in some ofXavante ar­eas, where Indian children were brought up and kept apart from their families during the school year, and, obviously, from their own Xavante culture. This caused significant cultural and social alienation between the different genera­tions. Gradually, with pressure from Xavante leaders and scholars rising, these boarding-schools were closed (Menezes 1985). School education in the Xavante areas, however, largely remairred under missionary control.

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tion" (Cameiro da Cunha 1995: 290). 31 The teachers seemed convinced that children were those most able to guarantee this would actually happen.

Blackened faces at the break of dawn

Soon after I arrived in the village and started my fieldwork, the teachers told me with considerable enthusiasm about something called "coal dust game," referring to it as one of the school activities the children enjoyed a lot. The game had been inspired by a Xavante practice recently recalled by the old people and re-arranged to serve a new purpose in school education. According to the elder Xavante people, intimes past, when the Xavante were stillliving a semi-nomadic life, everyone woke up before sunrise and took a bath in a nearby river. This was supposed to maintain one's health and prepare a person for the daily tasks. The older generation still stick to this habit today, but the younger ones have given it up or limited its frequency. The "coal dust game" was intended to recollect this practice and adapt it to new educational pur­poses. lt was carried out as follows:

The children (five to 12 years old) who managed to wake up at daybreak gathered in front of the teacher' s house and went along with him from house to house, awakening the other children. To do so they were given little pieces of coal from the fire the night before, which they cmmbled into dust, to mb on the faces of their sleeping mates. The latter, caught by surprise, would protest, but - now fully awake - would join the group in their activities. When all children were awake, the game transformed into a mock fight - including a lot of laughter, shouting, and sometimes some tears as weH - with all of them mbbing each other' s bodies with coal dust. Then they and their teacher all went to take a bath in the nearby river.

This practice of mbbing faces with coal dust has its origin in the gendered division of labour with women incharge of all domestic tasks. They collected fmits and seeds and worked in the small seasonal manioc gardens. Men for their part had to defend the territory and the people. They were in charge of opening clearings in the woods to establish new Settlements and engaged in hunting and fishing. In case a man stayed at home for too long, not fulfilling his duty to provide for the farnily with fresh meat and fish, his wife would protest by mbbing coal dust in his face. To wash hirnself he needed to go to the river. lt was likely for him to be seen by someone who would then spread the embarrassing news that he had not brought home any food for a long time. Through the "coal dust game" the teachers wanted torevive a cultural practice almost forgotten among the younger generation. They managed to do so by furnishing it with new dynamics. At the same time they caused the same kind of shameful feeling among those not able to fulfil their responsibilities - arriv-

31 See Clifford (1988) and Sahlins (2000) on the topic of "culture" as anthropo­logy's "disappearing object."

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ing at school on time, clean and fresh. What the teachers were not expecting, however, was the children taking the lesson so seriously and becoming so en­thusiastic about it that they decided to wake up all sorts of people by mbbing their faces with coal dust. This caused a lot of fun and laughter initially - as well as some protest by the young men - but most of all it initiated a general discussion about the present gendered distribution of work in the village. I will try to explain why.

After settling permanently, the need to clear woods for new Settlements decreased substantially. Having to defend one's territory became a thing ofthe past and the surrounding farms hardly made hunting activities possible. Thus, traditional male tasks became largely obsolete. Apart from their involvement in local politics, which takes up some time, men these days have a lot of spare time.

On the other hand, the increased number of children that need to be taken care of and fed, increased the need to raise crops and collect wood for fires. Furthermore, once clothing had been introduced into their culture by the mis­sionaries, these also had to be washed. As all these activities are traditional female tasks, women - as opposed to the men- had to work more and more. As one result, most women stick to the tradition of waking up before sunrise so as to complete their many tasks. Most men on the other hand - especially the younger ones- do not. lt was these younger men who were forced to wake up through the "coal dust effect."

The children's awakening action thus uneavered several social problems in the community at large. lt caused the villagers to reflect upon traditional Xavante practices and new practices introduced by school education. For ex­ample, people started to talk about the fact that women were gradually with­drawing from participation in dances and rituals, simply because they were too tired from work. People felt this was a serious loss, especially in a society where the older generation need to serve as examples to maintain its cultural heritage. Furthermore, girls stopped going to school at a very early age to help their mothers in their domestic tasks and to look after their younger siblings. People gathered that such an uneven distribution of knowledge would increase problems between the sexes. Women would largely remain illiterate, they would not know Portuguese and thus would have little chance outside the world of the Xavante. They realized that if they let things continue in this way, the Xavante would never manage to establish school education as a means to prepare all of their members - girls and boys, women and men - to interact as equals with one another and with the more widely established Bra­zilian society and its culture.

Another important discussion the "coal dust game" evoked concerned the question of parents' and teachers' responsibilities for children' s education. Being at school on time, for example, was a problem. The teachers did not want to ring the bell to call the children to dass, like the missionaries used to do and like city schools still do today. They preferred to rely on their own cul­tural heritage, inventing the "coal dust game." They succeeded too. I noticed

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that on the days the "coal dust game" did not take place, some children were late for school, were not clean and had left their school materials at home. Sometimes the teacher had to send them to the schoollavatory to wash them­selves or back home to get their things. The teachers did not feel at ease doing so because they were afraid to hurt the parent's feelings, who, in their opinion, were the ones who should feel responsible, but some of whom obviously did not.

A number of questions arise: What are the teachers' and the families' Ob­ligations in such a differentiated school project that wants to include the whole community? Where are the boundaries between parents' and teachers' duties? Where do these boundaries overlap? Children who have to help their parents while they should be at school have a problem. How is this problern to be solved by those personally and institutionally involved - children, parents, teachers, and the school system? How can the rights guaranteed by the Consti­tution be put into practice?

Suchproblems were often discussed at the evening meetings in the wara, the central area of the village. Although this is traditionally a male space, it was also frequented by women and children on such occasions. The children used to stay quiet and listen to what was said, playing around a bit. Obviously, finding solutions that satisfied everyone was not easy since there were Contra­dietory opinions and viewpoints, but the teachers tried anyhow. "We are just at the beginning. We still do not understand fully what this differentiated school education is," one of them told me. Another one said: "We have lived under the influence of the missionary school system for 40 years. That is quite a long time. [ ... ] We have to accept that sometimes the community does not understand, does not approve. lt is part ofit. But I am not going to give up try­ing other ways. I cannot remain within old pattems forever."

The children's positive response to the "coal dust game" as well as the discussions that ensued confirmed the teachers' conviction that they should go ahead in searching for appropriate new solutions to the developing problems. Besides, the "coal dust game" had many- intended and unintended- positive effects on sociallife in the community. I could observe not only the discovery ofthegender problern through the "coal dust game," but also some attempts to find solutions. For example, the village's tmck was made available for women at least once a week to go collect wood. Before, women as well as some of the girls had to walk several kilometres carrying heavy burdens on their backs. I also heard the older men in the village stating that men should help their wives with the work in the fields, which caused some confusion with regard to gen­der roles and obligations at first. They said, men' s help would make it less necessary for girls to help their mothers, which would enable them to attend school. So the old men set an example for the younger ones, an initiative much appreciated by the teachers incharge ofthe project.

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How to value children's participation?

I do not know what the project has achieved since my fieldwork, but I think that the unfolding of the "coal dust game" in this small community serves as a good example of what the Xavante teacher described as giving value to chil­dren's participation. In theorical terms: children's experience is perceived as having an impact on sociallife which is acknowledged as agency. Later, the same teacher explained to me that this to him means paying attention to the signs children give and to gradually completing an educational process taking place bothat school andin daily life elsewhere.

This educational process has been affecting the whole community of Idzö'uhu. For example, children took home Portuguese words, but they also showed increasing interest in Xavante mythology. In ethno-science lessons, children leamed how to make use of their natural environment in order to im­prove their own and their families' nutrition, they leamed how to find healing herbs and roots and to produce useful tools as weil as arts and crafts. As chil­dren were learning about almost forgotten cultural practices from the older men and women, who bad still experienced a semi-nomadic Iifestyle, the in­termediate generation eventually recalled them as weil, giving them new meanings and using them for new purposes.

As we have seen, combining different forms of knowledge and different ways of communicating knowledge is not an easy task and involves many problems. One needs to combine children's need for regular school education with their family's need for children to partake in domestic activities. Tasks with regard to school education need to be distributed. Xavante women, for instance, do not traditionally have any role in their children' s formal educa­tion. Therefore it is difficult for people to accept female teachers, difficult to understand that such a female teacher might leave the village for long periods of time to attend courses while her busband takes care of the children. This very woman and teacher with all her expertise and influence will - as a result of the latter - also play an important role in politics conceming indigenous education, a major field of indigenous politics. This fact will likely also en­counter resistance in a society, where traditionally politics and public affairs were once the exclusive domain of men.

The project, the implementation of which I observed among the Xavante, needs to be understood as an intercultural process. To do so, one needs to ac­knowledge that the acquisition and mediation of knowledge in indigenous cul­tures differs from how this process takes place in non-indigenous cultures. The former is based on specific oral traditions, which differ from one group of people to another, whereas the latter has a written tradition, which is influ­enced by mass communication resulting in a higher degree of standardization and mutual intelligibility. Nevertheless, it is possible to communicate between indigenous and non-indigenous cultures and their respective traditions. Such an intercultural process would ideally involve communication, exchange and reciprocity on an equal footing between the societies involved. However, my

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observations show that this is not (yet) the case. Teachers mentioned more than once that school education occupies the space of Indian culture, keeping children away from Xavante culture and its ways of learning about the world. This suggests competition rather than dialogue between the cultures con­cemed- with the Xavante culture on the losing side. The Indians' search for solutions to such problems - solutions which make sense within their own culture - is of cmcial importance here, also because it is a way to identify dif­ferences and peculiarities, thus making it easier to deal with them.

An important step in the direction of intercultural education on the part of the non-indigenous society would be the institutional acknowledgement of in­digenous schools and teachers by the govemment as well as that proposals coming from the villages be treated with respect and given support. Here is where anthropologists can give a hand.

The question remains, however, whether those planning differentiated school education for the Indian peoples of Brazil are able to accept and under­stand what the Xavante teacher from Idzö'uhu said: "Not everyone can bow their head and recognize a child's experience. But it is important to give atten­tion to the wisdom that children have and which we do not know anything about. Instead of going there, where the child has more freedom to be creative, we do not care and say: 'it is just childish.' And that is why we are unable to value what children feel."

The perception of childhood that this Xavante teacher expressed is usually not perceived by the professionals dealing with education questions. lt also escapes most social scientists' minds, anthropologists included. When we talk about intercultural dialogue we need to keep in mind that even a single culture is not experienced the same way by all those identifying with it. There are several interacting sub-cultures within any given culture, as well as many cul­tural identities, one of them being those of children. Within the programmes of indigenous school education, it might be clear and generally accepted that the cultural particularities of each of the indigenous peoples be taken into con­sideration. What is not so clear and not accepted is that children as members of these indigenous groups of people have an identity of their own, which might be congment in parts with the rest of the community, but might very well differ from it in others. Such particularities and differences in children' s identity within a given culture and society are still not considered in the dif­ferentiated school education progranunes and curricula. lt is still only adults who officially define them. Children's perception of such cultural particulari­ties of the society they live in is still ignored, as is their (sub-)cultural identity.

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CONTRIBUTORS

N adina Christopoulou, PhD in Social and Political Sciences. Researcher at the Greek Council for Refugees in Athens, Greece. Main interests: diaspora issues, migration, refugees.

Violeta Davoliute, PhD in Comparative Literature. Researcher at the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, Canada. Main Inter­ests: cultural aspects of travel and forced migration, Central and Eastem Eu­ropean literature, memory and history, life stories, The Gulag and its literary aftermath.

Heike Drotbohm, PhD in Anthropology, Lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Main interests: urban anthropology, migration studies, anthropology of childhood and youth, an­thropology of religions. Regions of research are The Caribbean and West­Africa.

H. Julia Eksner, M.A. in Anthropology and African Studies, PhD candidate at Northwestem University in Evanston, USA. Main interests: developmental and cultural context of learning, influence of immigration experiences on the learning of adolescent refugees in the USA.

Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, PhD in Education, Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California in Los Angeles. Main interests: daily lives and language practices of the children of immigrants in urban schools and communities.

Jacqueline Knörr, PhD in Anthropology, Head of Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. Main inter­ests: migration, creolization, urban anthropology, integration and conflict, po­litical anthropology, gender, childhood. Regions of research are West Africa, Indonesia and Germany.

Sonja de Leeuw, PhD in Film- and Television Studies, Professor at the De­partment of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Main interests: Dutch television culture in an international con­text, TV's role in the construction of cultural identity, media and cultural di­versity, diasporic media, representation of ethnicity.

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Sabine Mannitz, PhD in Anthropology, Senior Researcher at the Peace Re­search Institute in Frankfurt on Main, Germany. Main interests: migration and national identity, social constmction of alterity, socialization processes in modern society.

Angela Nunes, PhD in Anthropology, Research Associate at PINEB (Re­search Programme on the Northeastem Brazilian Indians), University ofBahia (UFBA), Brazil. Main interests: childhood, intercultural education, ethnic mi­norities, migration, gender, human rights policies.

Jan C. Oberg, PhD in Anthropology, Research Associate at the Institute for Cultural Studies (BIK), University of Bremen, Germany. Main interests: field research, chilhood and migration, maritime culture in coastal societies.

Jana Pohl, PhD student (Slavonic Philology) at Greifswald University, Ger­many. Main interests: images of migration and topography in North American children' s literature, J ewish American children' s literature.

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